Friday, September 9, 2011

And they were all yellow...

When I was in Florida visiting my sister we built a corner shelf for her. Now, not everyone likes home DIY projects while on vacation, but I have never been normal.
(Just ask the people I went to high school with, they will all support my claim).

My sister had just moved to FL and needed some furniture. She was talking about a corner shelf for her living room and I jumped right in with the suggestion of making one out of a bi-fold closet door. She only looked at me like I was crazy for a few seconds before she caught right on and was intrigued by the idea. We are related after all, the same craziness is in her blood too...



So we went to the local home improvement store, leaving my trooper of a hubby in charge of 7 children.

This was his side of the conversation when I told him of our plans.

CM - Wait! Where are you going?  -  To Home Depot. Why?  -  You want to build a shelf out of what???  -  And how are you going to build it?  -  Oh you need me to build it.... well....  -  Hold on here, you're not taking ANY of the kids!?!?!?  -  How long will you be?  -  It's gonna take longer then an hour for you to...

At this point I kissed him, slapped his butt and walked out the door.

See why I married him? What a stud.


We came back with this stuff, and some spray paint.


We didn't end up using all of this stuff. I wasn't sure how CM would want to put it together so I just got everything I thought we would need.

We ended up needing
1 set of Bifold closet doors (costing about $35, not too shabby).
5 wooden corner shelves
long screws
spray primer and spray paint.
Spackle and sand paper optional


First we moved the hinges from the inside of the doors to the outside.

 Disclaimer - When I say "we" I really mean CM, I might have helped hold something but he really built it. 


Like this ^


Measure where you want your shelves and screw them in from the back of the door using long screws and a level to make sure they are, um, level.


Screw them in close to the edges so you go through the wood part of the door because the middle is hollow, the edges are framed with wood. I should also mention that he pre drilled each hole so the wood wouldn't split when he sent the screw through.


It sometimes helps to have a baby hold things in place... and sometimes it does not help.


Spackle the screw holes if you wish


Stand it up and see what the babies think.


Take it out to the garage,  prime the wood parts and paint it.


We put the knob where we felt like it should go. Placement was dictated mostly by how high it needed to be to keep away from little boy curious hands.


While it dries, go to the beach! For like 3 hours because FL is really humid.


We rubbed it with some minwax wood stain in order to antique it up a bit. My sis did this herself because it took a few days to dry completely and I had flown home by then.


Now she just needs to decorate it.

These are some cute pics that I took of my sisters kids earlier this year. 



Her daughter is three and the twins are one. We will really miss them living close by. But what an awesome excuse to plan a trip to Florida!

Thanks - RM

This post was featured at Delightful Deets.
Thank you so much for giving me my very first feature! I am so honored.

7 comments:

Delightful Deets said...

This turned out really cute! I featured it on my Friday 5, thanks for sharing!

Rachael said...

@Modern Wivelyhood Oh wow! I've been featured! That is so awesome, as you can see I'm kinda new to this. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you liked it. I think I need to build one for myself also :-) - RM

Woodooz said...

This is a very functional DIY... Do you get those corner shelves off the shelf from the local home depot ? Or did you have to buy the planks and work on getting the rounded corner ? Corner shelf using a door panel is very new for me and it looks so awesome !

Rachael said...

@Somu Nope we got everything right off the shelf at Home depot. My sis didn't have very many tools besides a drill, so everything had to be ready to put together. And we were on vacation and had little time.

I am a tightwad and if I was building this at home I would have gotten the planks and cut out the shelfs from them. But using the pre cut corner shelves was a great timesaver and it really made this project easy.

Thanks for your question, I'm new to this so I really get excited when someone likes something that I did. - RM

Anonymous said...

This has turned out fabulous!! Looks gorgeous!! :-)

Emreen said...

Gorgeous.... Wow... Lovely idea... It has turned out fabulous... . ;-) ... The last pic is really cute... !!!

JFY said...

o I love it- I have had some bifold doors for a while now- just wondering what to do with them. I have been needing some tall shelving on the sides of my fireplace (tv is above fp) I think this is going to work great! You did an awesome job. Thanks for sharing

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