Furniture,  Welding

Live Edge Floating Shelves

The weather this weekend meant working on indoor projects. So we decided to cross floating shelves off our list. A while back we picked out two live edge pine boards for this project. They had some drying to do since the kiln isn’t up and running yet.

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Decorating the shelves.

But, lets go back to the beginning and see how we built and installed them. First up we had to cut down the pine trees. 🙂

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Cutting the pine trees.

No joke. These shelves were built using the pine trees we cut down at my Mom’s house.

Once we picked out our boards, it was a waiting game. We had to let them dry. Another test in patience. Once we get the kiln running, our wait time will be drastically reduced.

floating shelves.
Live edge pine boards 2 inches thick

The up side of an open floor plan house is lots of space, the down side is less wall space. We finally landed on this wall for our floating shelves. I measured and taped off the approximate location over a month a go. And this is how it sat.

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Pretty green stripes.

First step was cutting the boards to length.

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Cutting on the mitre saw

Sending them through the planer.

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Lots of shavings

And giving them a good sanding.

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Nice and smooth

I wanted a groove towards the back of the board for standing pictures or plates etc. to help keep them upright.

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Routing the groove

And the result…

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Perfect

Then it was my turn to work on the shelves. I applied three coats of polyurethane over the course of a couple of days. Jim hand sanded between each coat.

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Fancy apron.
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Back in the workshop

I don’t know if any of you can relate… but in general, when I show something to Jim either in a store or online, his first response is always, “I can make that!” Sometimes it gets made and sometimes not. Thank goodness he hasn’t built a loom, so I can still buy my own clothes. 🙂

When we first started thinking about this project, I showed Jim the hardware online for hanging floating shelves. Guess what he said?

He bought a steel flat bar and a steel rod. He cut small 1 1/4 inch squares from the flat bar and then drilled two holes in each for the screws to go through to hold up the shelves.

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Drilling holes for the screws

Then he cut the round steel rod into 6 inch lengths.

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Cutting the rod with a grinder

The studs in the wall determined where the hardware had to go, and how many we could use. Ended up using two for each. The longer shelf didn’t quite reach the third stud.

Now for the big test!! Jim had to weld the rod to the small steel piece he cut from the flat bar.

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Love this picture

Here is the result.

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It worked!! That lesson came in handy

Back to the boards, Jim had to drill holes into the shelves for the steel rod to slide into.

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Jim’s awesome. He’s expensive… but awesome.

Jim used the router to make room for the steel bracket to sit flush.

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Getting closer to hanging them

Back in the house, Jim attached the new hardware he made to the wall using two screws, screwed into the studs.

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Attaching the hardware

This was a prototype we made before we started to put our hardware theory to the test. It shows you how the boards are going to hang.

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Test piece

And with that, we had 2 inch thick,  live edge floating shelves.

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Working on the lower shelf

And…

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Check it out

I’m sure I’ll be changing things out over time. That’s the fun of it.

Later

A Newfoundland born Canadian with a life long interest in woodworking, baking and anything else that peaks my curiosity.

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