How to make a wooden shelf with your own hands - drawings and photos

To organize the space in the room and give the interior a complete look, you can use wall shelves. Along with clocks, paintings, embroideries and other decorative elements, storage spaces on the walls really refresh the room, make it more habitable, residential, as you can place things on the shelves that will tell a lot about the owners of the interior: about their book preferences, about travel - and will also become a branch of the family album.

In furniture and interior stores, the choice of shelves is great, and often choosing the right item for you is not difficult. But a self-made shelf will make the interior unique, special, and besides, making it will bring a lot of positive emotions.

We will tell in this article about the main stages of making wooden shelves with your own hands, about their types and options for interior solutions.

Choosing the material for the shelf

In modern interiors, there are no longer restrictions on the use of one or another material, and everything is used: glass, plastic, iron, wood and other options.

The glass in the room looks fresh, visually expands the space, but among the disadvantages of such shelves is the difficulty of caring for them and the danger of injury, which is extremely important if there are small children in the house.

Tempered glass or triplex is used as a material for such shelves.

Plastic shelves are practical, inexpensive, but collect a lot of dust, and their main drawback is that, even considering their rich color palette, they may not fit well into every interior. In addition, such shelves are more suitable for a bathroom or bedroom, and they are not suitable for creating a single ensemble with living room furniture.

Metal shelves are so original that they will emphasize any room design, and you can choose such shelves for any style. But not every wall will cope with their fastening. Also, metal products are subject to transformation over time, corrosion may occur, and they will lose their original elegant appearance.

Wood remains a versatile choice for creating a shelf. Due to its texture, wood gives the living room a warm and very cozy atmosphere.

Pros and cons of wooden shelves

Wood is the leader in environmental friendliness among all materials. Of course, wooden details in the interior refresh it and bring it closer to nature.

The main advantages of wooden shelves:

Using texture, color, decor and individual layout, you can create a magnificent interior space.

• Natural wood, even treated with varnishes and special products, collects dust much less than a product made from any other material.
• Wood is a breathable material that does not emit harmful substances into the atmosphere.
• Wooden parts are easily processed using tools that can be found in any, even a small workshop.
• Wood is a classic material, familiar to the human eye and relatively inexpensive (unless, of course, the most expensive and rare types of wood are used).
• The availability of wood still surpasses all other materials for the manufacture of shelves.

But with all its advantages, the tree also has a number of disadvantages:

• Noble varieties of wood are quite expensive.
• During production, a lot of waste is generated: shavings, sawdust, bark, and so on.
• With poor processing or its special absence, the tree can leave splinters on the human skin when using the shelf.

To make a choice about the use of this or that material, of course, the owners, and in this article we will analyze several options for making wooden shelves with our own hands.

Types of shelves

If you have already decided on the material from which you will make the shelf, then it's time to choose the design that your product will represent.

If we talk about wooden shelves, then they are:

Handmade décor items grab our attention

• Traditional wall; are located on the walls, mounted on them with special devices, brackets on dowels or screws.
• Suspended; fastened by hanging on belts, chains, pieces of fabric, etc. By the way, fastening on macrame (special weaving from nylon or other similar threads) remains an old, but relevant in modern times, way of placing hanging shelves.
• floor; as the name implies, they stand on the floor, while they can occupy the entire space of the wall or only part of it, or they can be located outside the support. In the meantime, such structures can serve to zoning the space in the room, for example, to separate the working area of ​​the head of the family and the common area for guests and everyone present in the living room.

The type and even the material of the shelf also needs to be chosen based on what exactly you are going to store on it. For example, heavy books are best stored on shelves mounted on the wall or standing on the floor, due to the fact that "sources of knowledge" are very heavy. (For how to make a bookshelf on the wall with your own hands, read.

If you want to place a shelf outside of any support (hanging), then you should not put fragile travel souvenirs and other pleasant trifles on it, as well as flower vases, as any accident can move such a shelf.

Fresh flowers in pots should not be placed on wooden shelves, since when watering, some of the water can fall on the surface of the tree and gradually damage it.

So, it would seem that a simple thing becomes a whole art.

Making a corner wooden shelf for books

It is easy to make such a wooden shelf for storing several books or souvenirs. For this you will need:

• ruler and pencil for marking;
• jigsaw or saw for making parts;
• glue for wood (for connecting elements);
• boards of suitable width;
• level;
• elements for mounting the shelf on the wall.

This shelf is perfect for small spaces.

Before starting work, you need to imagine the future product, it is best to make a drawing. Using a ruler and pencil, mark the wood blank and cut out the details. You need to connect them taking into account the verified vertical, using the building level.

Note: before joining, the parts must be sanded, but the structure must be varnished after the parts have fallen into place.

After the shelf is ready, you just need to attach it to the wall in the chosen place.

Shelf made of wooden planks, hung on straps

To make such a shelf, you only need a few belts of the same length and as many wooden planks as you plan to get on the shelf.

Choose leather and durable belts with metal buckles

In addition, prepare:

• knife for cutting belts;
• drill for making holes in the wall;
• dowels, screws, nails.

First of all, make sure that the straps are exactly the same length and width: this is necessary for the stability of the shelf.

If you have several tiers, then attach boards of the selected size to the straps using nails. Align the level so that the shelves are strictly horizontal.

Now you can attach the straps to the wall.

Which tree to choose

Which tree to choose depends only on your personal preferences and solvency. Redwood, rosewood, cedar, beech or ebony are certainly very expensive. But if you use varieties that grow in your area, for example, pine, birch, then you can create a completely budgetary option for interior design in the form of a shelf. Of all the above types of wood, it is pine that lends itself best to processing, so it is preferable to use it for making wooden shelves.

Larch and oak are practically resistant to decay, and are also more durable than pine.

Master's advice: it is better to keep any tree before processing for several days in the room where it is planned to use the shelf, so that it “gets used” to the microclimate, humidity and other parameters of the room. After that, you can process the wood as usual.

In the event that natural wood is too expensive for you, you can use its substitutes: chipboard and similar materials. They are made of wood shavings or sawdust with the help of an adhesive, and on top they are covered with a laminated layer imitating a wood pattern. And, although they are inferior to natural material in terms of durability, they are similar in terms of ease of use. Just like wooden products, chipboard shelves fit well into any classic interior.

So, if you put in a little effort and imagination, you will get a unique furniture option for storing books, flowers or small items, including travel souvenirs and photographs. With proper care, such a shelf will serve you for a long time, and when you change the interior, it can be repainted, varnished or redesigned, because natural wood, although a renewable resource, is still much more valuable than any shelf made of plastic or other material.

From this video You will learn how to make a multi-cell shelf from solid pine with your own hands.