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A Great Guide to Building your Own Utility Shelf
Both of these projects were part of my Great Budget-Friendly Laundry Room Makeover. If you haven’t read that post yet, you definitely should go read that first! This was my first time building a shelf, but I’ve made these farmhouse signs before!
Shelving Unit
When my husband and I were dreaming and talking about updating our laundry room, I knew I wanted a shelf like this. Our house only has 2 closets. Our bedroom closet and linen closet in the bathroom. That’s it. Not a lot of storage space. I don’t even know what the previous owners used for storage in the laundry room. They had no shelves or anything in here. After we got all settled in, I just bought a pre-made white shelf. It was fine for a temporary setup. But not what I was really wanting.
The best thing bout waiting to do room makeovers is that you have plenty of time to really decide what it is that you want. I knew right away when I started planning that I needed more space! I loved the idea of having a top shelf and a middle shelf. Something I never really had seen before.
I could have just bought another pre-made shelf but I wanted my middle shelf and top shelf to match. So picked up a (3) 1 by 2 by 10 feet pieces for the middle shelf and then (1) 1 by 10 by 10 feet. All standard pine I didn’t spend over $30 on all the wood plus about $10 for the brackets.
Stain and Screw in the Brackets
For the top shelf, I just stained the top shelf and then screwed in the brackets. I measured where my studs were on my wall then measured on my board and that’s where my brackets went. Pretty simple!
For all of my staining projects, I have used the Minwax Polyshades stain and polyurethane in one in the color espresso. I got it from Menards. This was my first time buying stain but I’ve used it on numerous different projects since January 2021 when we built our new tv stand. It’s held up really nice, I love the color, and it saves me an extra step since is stain and polyurethane in one.
The middle shelf I made was 1-foot wide by 3 feet tall. The perfect size to fit in between my washer and dryer and for my laundry room door to still be able to swing shut. I had (9) 3-foot pieces. And (12) 1-foot pieces but only used 9.
To build this shelf, I took one (1) foot piece and attached three of the 3-foot pieces to back and 2 (3) foot pieces and attached to either side of the 1-foot piece. Then added another 1-foot piece in the middle and then another foot piece at the top.
For the middle and front sections, I took two 3 foot pieces and three 1 foot pieces. 1-foot pieces bottom middle and top. The 1-foot pieces are my shelves. I took scrap pieces of wood to attach the three sections together at each of the shelves acting as brackets. The bottom two worked great for little legs and to get it off the floor just a tad.
The Completed Middle Shelf
Overall, the shelving was a pretty easy project and I’m happy with the end result! I love that it didn’t cost me much for this project either. In all since I already had the stain, this was a $30-$40 project. And you already know that I went to Goodwill for my decorative pieces. That I got everything for $13 there. I hope you enjoyed this Great Guide to Building your Own Utility Shelf. A great addition to this room! This post and the links provided are not sponsored or affiliated. For more behind the scenes and day-to-day posts follow Roost Eleven Eighteen on Instagram.
