• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Policies & Disclaimers
  • Home Tour
  • Blog Post Gallery
  • Design Services

October 8, 2013 Crafts & DIY

Shelf Upgrade: Faux Crates

Welcome to the pre-reveal-Jodie’s-bedroom-projects-athon! Today I wanted to address the elephant in my room, the bookcase overflowing with clothes.

diy faux crates

I know, embarrassing.

As you can see on the bottom, I’ve tried purchasing baskets to help this messy situation, but it’s so hard/expensive to find multiple baskets of the same size that fit the shelves perfectly, so I came up with a different solution- faux crates! Note: If you’re here from Pinterest- I’ve just added new photos. This is the same project!

Master bedroom blue paint color photo SAM_0847_zpsa3c40954.jpg

Making them was very simple and very inexpensive. We started with a trip to The Home Depot (we’re now regulars and have friends there and I’m so not upset about that) to purchase two 1×4 boards for just over $2 each. We had measured the width of our bookcase and subtracted about 1/4″ (we will explain later) and had the boards cut at the store. Since we needed two boards per shelf, and had three shelves, we ended up with six pieces at 24 1/2″ long.

home depot shopping

After we sanded them down to be nice and smooth, we stained and poly’d the wood our favorite Minwax’s Espresso. We used one coat and wiped it off after about a minute to get a lighter tone.

espresso stain

While that was drying, we worked on the next step. We took white spray paint to contractor shims to use as the vertical part of the crate to keep the horizontal (the stained wood above) together. Two per crate were needed for a total of six shims.

faux crates

After they were dry, we cut them down to our desired length of 7 1/2″ and nailed the pieces together using small 3/4″ brad nails.

diy faux crates

We wanted to add some hardware to finish the crate look, so simply marked off our hardware, drilled a few holes, and attached the pulls.

diy faux crates

Now, remember how we cut the boards to 1/4″ less than the width of our shelf? That’s to accommodate the vinyl bumpers we added to the sides of our crate front to wedge it into the sides of the bookcase and keep it in place. We purchased self adhesive stickers, so adding them was the simplest step!

diy faux crates diy faux crates

After it’s all put together, we put them into place and put my clothes back onto the shelves!

diy faux crates shelf organization photo bookcase organization photo

Here’s a breakdown of the costs for anyone interested:

  • Two 1×4’s: $2.06 ea
  • Stain and Poly: Already had on hand, but around $5 ea for the small size, plus you’ll have extra to use for another project!
  • Spray Paint: Already had on hand, but ranges from $2-$7 depending on what you pick
  • Nails: Already had on hand, but can purchase for less than $2
  • Hardware: $4.97 ea
  • Vinyl Bumpers: $3.97

Total: $23 for $6.97 per crate (factor in any extra costs for paint/stain/poly/nails if you’re starting from scratch of course)

 

diy crates for shelf photo bookcase organization photo

Thanks for stopping by!

Prost!

-J&P

Linking up to: Suburbs Mama, Maison de Pax, Rain on a Tin Roof, So Much Better with Age, Dimples and Pig Tales and Commona-My-House
Serendipity and SpiceThe DIY'ersDIY Show OffThe Blissful Bee


Categories: Crafts & DIY Tags: bookcase, crates, diy crates, faux crates, hardware, shelf solutions

Previous Post: « B & A: Old White Chair
Next Post: Chalkboard Coasters »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Social Life

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on PinterestFollow Us on InstagramFollow Us on E-mail

Categories

Copyright© 2023 · Cookd Pro Theme by Shay Bocks