After watching a few episodes of "Fixer Upper" on HGTV, I got inspired to head to our local antique store to do some browsing. Our beach cottage is in pretty good shape, but there are a few areas I'm still keeping an eye out for the perfect idea. While shopping, I typically take photos of items that grab my attention with my phone. This is so I can go home and think about where the items can be utilized. This bathtub full of wagon-wheel-brackets caught my eye. . .
I think the wagon-wheel-brackets looked particularly interesting to me because I had just painted the spindles on our banister white (see photo below), and the spindle characteristics of these brackets would tie in nicely to the whole cottage feel we are going for.
In addition, I love it when I come across anything in the category of architectural salvage. I think it is a great way to bring character into a newer home.
My first thought when I see any type of bracket like this, is using them for shelf supports for a rectangular shelf, but I couldn't picture a good place for a long shelf like this. Then it dawned on me - how about using these to create a corner shelves? The dining room had a vacant spot (we had thrown around the idea of finding an old surfboard to prop in the corner, but it hadn't happened yet, and I was starting to doubt we would find one that was reasonably priced, and looked good). Corner shelves would work out perfectly - two brackets could be used in the corners with a pie shaped shelves mounted on top to create a corner shelf; so with four brackets we could create two shelves.
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| Empty Corner Wall in Dining Room |
In addition to working well in the corner of the dining room - the shelves would help create balance in the whole great room area. The opposite corner of the great room had a couple old style rope-boat-bumpers (see photo below). I was having trouble picturing something that would balance out the corner on the other side of the room in the dining room - the idea of corner shelves was ideal for this purpose.
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| Opposite Corner of Great Room - Boat Bumpers |
CONSTRUCTING THE SHELVES
When I held the wagon wheel brackets up in the corner - they seemed a bit "busy". The pieces needed screws removed and some cleaning up. I felt that painting them the same clean color white of the trim would enable them blend in more, as ultimately the items placed on the shelves would be the focal point of the space anyway.
Here are the plans I came up with. I enlisted the help of my husband and his friend to put these shelves together.
Based on my plans I needed to purchase the following:
- MDF (enough to create the pie shaped shelves)
- 2x2 pieces (for the braces for the back of the shelf, one for each shelf)
- Keyhole Brackets for hanging (I purchased 2 for each shelf, but only ended up using one per shelf to hang them).
- Prime & Paint
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| Wagon Wheel Brackets Primed and Painted |
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| MDF ready to cut for shelves |
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| Pieces of wood purchased for corner supports (to attach brackets). |
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| Keyhole Anchors for mounting shelf on wall. These will be placed on the corner support wood pieces above. |
We used a piece of wood in the corner to provide support for the brackets, and then cut a wedge shaped piece of MDF to go on top for the shelf. The front edge of the shelf was routed to create a curved edge. This was to mimic the edge that already existed on the ends of the wagon wheel brackets. All the pieces were primed and painted the white trim color prior to installation. I decided I could do some touch up later if I needed to.
My husband decided it would be best to assemble these shelves in place. His concern is that the walls in the corner where they were to be hung were not perfectly square. I'm so glad we went with this approach because he was absolutely right! The walls were slightly less than a 90 degree angle and this would have created issues had we pre-assembled the shelves prior to trying to hang them.
To install on the wall, we started with the 2x2 pieces. My husband and friend had mounted the keyhole brackets on the back. They had taken the time to route out spaces for them in order to allow the pieces to be mounted flush on the wall. (In other words, the keyhole brackets were inset into the back of these pieces.) Even though we had two keyhole hangers for each shelf, we ended up hanging these pieces with only one screw in the wall. It was almost impossible to try to utilize two screws into the keyhole hangers based on where they were located. We decided utilizing one screw into one of the hangers for hanging the shelves would be fine.
Next we attached the wedge shaped shelf top to the top of the 2x2 piece already mounted on the wall. This was done with just one screw in the back corner (pilot hole drilled first) drilled down from the top of the shelf into the 2x2. A finishing nail could have worked as well, but we went with a screw since it seemed to be more sturdy and it didn't matter the screw head was visible on the top of the shelf (with items sitting on the shelf you can't see the screws anyway).
The brackets were installed next, with screws drilled in at an angle (again we drilled pilot holes first). Each bracket was held in place with two screws - one on each side). Later, I covered the screws with primer and paint so they were not so visible on the finished product.'
I had been collecting items that would work on these shelves. The lighthouse was from our wedding. We were married on the beach and this was a part of the décor on the table where we used small wooden sailboats as escort cards. (See photo below and you can find that post here)
The small message-in-a-bottle is also from our wedding. These were our save-the-date notices that were mailed out to our guests (See photo below and you can find that post here).
I had found the picture frames a while back at Homegoods and they are a nice display for a couple of our scuba diving trip photos. The small bowl was found at Marshalls ($2.99!) and adds some more color. I think I found the woven-ceramic bowl on clearance at Target ages ago. I like how the shelves contribute to the cottage style of the room and relate to the white spindles on the stairway banister (see photo of banister below). I also like how they add a bit of cottage character to the space.
