how I built my floating shelves + styling them

I have given myself the official title of hairstylist/blogger/carpenter. But seriously! I purchased a circular hand saw when picking up the lumber for these shelves and it was the best decision I ever made. My confidence with this thing is through the roof haha. I am so dang happy with how these shelves turned out and I’m honestly shocked they look as good as they do!

I am so in love with the look of floating shelves. As someone who really struggles with committing to wall decor, floating shelves are my easy way out. They really help to fill a space out and I love that I can go in and re-style them as much as I please.

Most of the shelves in our home I have purchased and I did look into purchasing two instead of building them myself but I kept running into two big problems. The first problem was that I couldn’t find a shelf that held more than 15lbs of weight. The other problem was that when I found a shelf that could hold more than 15lbs, the shelf was way out of my price point. Like a few hundred $$ out of my price point. So, I watched a shit ton of youtube videos on how to build a floating shelf and did a little research on woods/wood stain and was on my way!

The wall we have these two shelves on is rather large. I went with 55″ shelves and have them sticking out 6″. I left about 9″ between the wall on either side of the shelf. I wrote nothing down and didn’t take any pictures so go easy on me here haha.

For this particular project I went with Select Pine Boards because I knew there would be less of a finishing job for me. By that I mean having to go around knots in the wood and sanding the pieces. The Select Pine Boards were a couple $$ more per board than regular lumber was but I liked not having to mess with smoothing the edges out so it was worth it to me!

For the shelf support on the wall I cut a 1″ x 2″ x 6ft pines down to 55″. I needed 4 of these 55″ cuts in total, but I’m breaking it down per section in hopes of making this a little easier. I took another piece of the 1″ x 2″ x 6ft pines and cut it into 4″ pieces. You will need (12) 4″ pieces in total. One of the 55″ pieces will have (6) 4″ pieces screwed into it. I used the 2″ wood screws for this part. The shelf support should look something like this graphic below.

I repeated the process above for the second shelf and then attached the shelf supports to the wall with the 3″ wood screws. I positioned the shelf support centered in the wall and drilled into the studs.

From there, I took a 1″ x 6″ x 55″ and placed it up against the supports on the wall and screwed it in from underneath with the 2″ wood screws. Looking at the shelf from above and at eye level looked like something in the graphic below.

Again, I’m not a pro when it comes to this stuff but this way worked for me so I’m sharing! This was my first time ever doing floating shelves so if you’re reading this and cringing…. I get it haha.

After attaching the bottom board I went in with another 55″ piece made from the 1″ x 2″ and attached it to the front with more wood screws. I’m showing a top view below on this which make so much more sense than I could explain and then I added the final 55″ piece that’s 1″ x 6″ and screwed it on the top!

The final product will look something like this and I have a real picture to show for it! If you look closely you can see what my ever so perfect graphics are trying to show.

I finished the boards up by covering the screw holes with wood putty and then once that dried I taped them off and did a single coat of clear water based polyurethane. I chose to stain the wood after instead of before because I wanted to use wood filler to fill in the screw holes and have the shelves look more seamless. I kept my windows open for a couple hours after for ventilation.

styling the shelves

Like I said in the beginning, I have a really hard time committing to decor so I already know I’ll be switching things up pretty often. With the lack of commitment comes the lack of how to style. What you see on the shelves is basically all the decor from all the other shelves in our home haha. I remember seeing somewhere (and I could totally be making this up) but when it comes to styling shelves it’s important to decorate in the rule of three’s. Meaning to have multiple groups of three and to have each item in each group different heights.

This is all very new to me so I’m relying a whole lot of Pinterest for the inspiration until I can step foot in a Homegoods but I’m having fun along the way! I can’t really link anything below but a lot of it’s been collected from World Market over time. They are one of my favorite home decor stores and all the pieces can easily be moved around our house.

*This post does contain affiliate links and if you attempt to make these shelves from my instructions I wish you all the luck haha.

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xx- Kendra