Gutter Shelves for Ten Bucks

My son has a loft bed and he is in the habit of keeping all of the books he is reading on his bed so he doesn’t have to climb up and down the ladder. Over time, the books accumulate to the point where there’s barely room left for him. So we were looking for a way to get his books off of his bed and onto the wall, but because space is limited, there isn’t room for a conventional book shelf up there. So I went looking for a solution.

A few years back no one had ever heard of gutter shelves. Then some clever person realized that they could put their kid’s books on a wall in such a way that would make it easy for them to see all of their books at once, and now gutter shelves are everywhere. The problem with them, as some other bloggers have pointed out, is that while they sound like a cheap alternative to shelving, all that hardware is actually pretty expensive.

You know what else is expensive? This shelf that they sell at Lowes. Are they kidding with that? It’s only three and a half feet long, and it cost $45! That’s nuts. We really liked the look of it, though, and it would serve our purposes well since it doesn’t stick off the wall very far. I’m pretty handy, so I figured I could come up with something that looked and worked the same, but was much cheaper. Which is why I’m going to show you how I built a very similar shelf, twice as long, for about ten bucks (twelve actually).

You will need some tools, and some skills with a miter saw. You will also need some glue and some screws. Assuming you have all of that, here is the material:

1. An 8-ft furring strip – $0.92
2. An 8-ft piece of MDF Crown Moulding – $10.80

The MDF moulding might be a bit warped, but that shouldn’t matter. Make sure you get a furring strip that is straight – they are usually very warped, so you might have to hunt through the pile to find a straight one. The moulding will follow the contour of the furring strip, so if it isn’t straight, your shelf won’t be either.

Decide how long you want your shelf to be – you will need about a foot of the moulding to cut the ends from, so the maximum shelf length is about 7 feet. I made mine about 65 inches. I mitered the ends of the long piece, then cut end pieces to give it a clean finished look. I glued these end pieces with wood glue, and used masking tape to hold them in place while the glue dried.

Next I mounted the furring strip to the wall to form a cleat that I could attach the moulding to. Even though this shelf won’t be supporting a lot of weight, I marked the studs and attached the cleat using screws because I avoid drywall anchors whenever I can. Because I didn’t want to move the bed, I used this trick with duct tape to catch all of the dust from drilling – then I carefully peel the tape off the wall and roll it up trapping the dust inside! No clean up afterwards! I put a screw in one end and then leveled the cleat and put the other screws in.

Once the cleat was mounted, I just put the moulding up against it, and put a few screws through it into the cleat to hold it in place. You can also countersink the screws, putty the holes, and paint them, if you are really ambitious. The cleat and the moulding form a nice groove that will hold most books (you know, unless your kid is reading Atlas Shrugged or something). That’s it! Okay, it’s not actually a gutter shelf, but I think it looks a lot better and it doesn’t cost as much.

 The Polar Express

I’ve spent the last six months remodeling our family room. You can see the progression in my photo album. But the culmination of all of that work is a model train that runs around the perimeter of the room. Here’s a quick video showing the final product.

 Using All Of The Space

If your house has more than one floor, chances are good that there is a lot of wasted space above and below your stairs that is just crying out to be filled with stuff. Shelves underneath the stairs are easy, and something that I added when we first moved in. But after years of climbing up and down the steps and staring at all of that empty white space up there, I finally had to do something with it, so as a side project to my current family room remodel, I’ve conjured up an entirely new room right off the kitchen that I’m calling a butler’s pantry.

The floor is a piece of 3/4″ plywood made just a bit beefier with some 1x4s, connected with some heavy duty hinges to a 2×4 attached to the wall with lag screws into the studs. It rests on a matching 2×4 on the opposite wall, and I cut a notch out of the wood to allow room for the handrail. This was designed to hold a single person, but we’ve already tested it with two adults (300+ pounds) and it had no trouble holding us.

Once the floor is in place, you can assemble whatever kind of shelves or hanging storage containers you like. I used 3/4″ pine boards that will easily hold 50-100 pounds on each shelf. Add a few hooks to the underside of the shelves and you have a place to hang pots and pans, or dry herbs from your herb garden. Mmmm… smell the rosemary. For just a couple hundred bucks in lumber and hardware, maybe you should add a new pantry to your house too? Eat your heart out Pinterest!

 Great Stories

I’m taking something of a sabbatical from Facebook – I’ve only posted there a handful of times this year.  I don’t check it obsessively,  like I once did.  In fact, sometimes an entire 24-hour period will go by without me even logging in (gasp!).  But this post isn’t about Facebook.  It’s about what I do now when I find something interesting that I deem worthy of sharing with others.  It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then, I come across a great story and I feel compelled to talk about it.   This is one of those times.

I read a fascinating account by a American newspaper editor living in Brazil who met an elderly couple who represented the last vestiges of a population of expatriated Americans who fled the South immediately following the Civil War.  Some 7000 people who were actively courted to bring their knowledge of cotton farming to Brazil at a time when it was struggling to grow its own population.  The most striking part of the story was that they maintained a separate and distinct culture, resisting assimilation for a century, right down to their quirky southern drawl.  Simply amazing.  You can read the whole story here.

Great stories like this should be shared. But not on Facebook.  It can’t do a story like this justice.  And yes, I realize that you are probably reading this on Facebook (because I’m still mirroring my blog there, but not for much longer), but if you got this far, it means your attention span hasn’t been permanently damaged.  And if you actually clicked the link above, and read the story, big bonus points for you!

Because if we can’t share great stories, then what is the point of this internet thing, anyway?

 Coming ‘Round The Mountain

I’m pretty proud of our little boy. His skills on the piano are getting better and better, and he nailed his rendition of the classic American folk song at his recital. Good job, Noah!