Pepper Design Blog

Project Nursery: Floating Shelves for Liv’s Tree

Last week I shared my weekend plans to add bookshelves to the colorful tree in Liv’s room. My inspiration stemmed (hehe) from this idea, but scaled back with just a few shelves on a few branches so that the shelves easily integrated into the wall image (rather than vice versa).

The project wasn’t too difficult to accomplish but it did send me back to the hardware store more times than I can count, hence the not getting it quite finished by end of weekend. But I’m loving the end result!!

The new shelves make for a little extra storage for a few small books, stuffies and art supplies. The bonus is that they’re out of Liv’s reach, so I can keep colored pencils, crayons, etc ready for drawing but not easily accessed by the little one.

My only challenge in building the shelves was figuring out an easy way to ‘float’ them so that you wouldn’t see hinges or nails or adhesive from the front side.

We ended up accomplishing this by using a 1/4″ dowel that we cut into small 4″ sections, and then inserting it half way into the wall and half way into each shelf several times.

Let’s start from the beginning…

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Tree Branch Floating Bookshelves
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Materials: 3/8″ pine planks, 1/4″ dowel, wood glue, drill, spray paint, saw (circular or manual with a miter box), nail gun (or finishing nails and a hammer)

To find the best angle for each new shelf, I first held up my wooden planks to the tree branches and made pencil marks for the exact angles I was hoping to achieve.

I determined that this particular shelf should be 15″ long and have a rise (that vertical piece) of 5″. All three shelves would have the same rise but varying lengths according to the branch lengths.

I could have easily cut a soft wood like pine with a saw and miter box, but we ran the planks through the circular saw and that this was the angle we were left with:

Just to be sure, I double checked my cuttings before adhering the two pieces together.

The first layer of adhesive came in the form of wood glue. You can see below that I labeled each set of planks for each shelf with an A, B or C so that I could easily match up the two pairs out of the total of 6 overall planks when gluing.

Then the two pieces of shelf were nail gunned together. Tapping finishing nails into the end with a hammer would have done the trick as well.

Three nails later and each shelf is secure!

I tested three different shades of brown to get as close to the original paint color, this is the one I ended up coating my three shelves in:

After several coats (I prefer to layer on light coat after light coat – sometimes as many as 4 or 5 rather than 1 or 2 heavy, drippy coats) of spray paint and a night of drying, it was time to attach the dowels.

I chose an oak dowel (stronger than pine) for this project and Kevin pre drilled three holes in two of the shelves and two in the smallest. Because the dowel was 1/4″ wide he used a 1/4″ drill bit. Easy peasy. Kev helped with this step because a steady hand is most necessary to avoid splitting new shelves. There’s not much wiggle room when you’re drilling a 1/4″ hole in a 3/8″ plank! He’s a pro with these tools.

Next we added the dowel:

And cut each to about a 2″ length poking out of each hole.

The shelves were ready for install. My apologies for switching up shelf examples here but now we’re working with the lowest shelf where as before the example shots were of the middle shelf on the left of the tree. Oopsies!

In this shot I’m lining up the shelf with the tree branch to determine my first hole.

Using the same 1/4″ drill bit, I drilled in one dowel hole for the shelf.

Now that I have my starting point, I can line up that first dowel hole with the shelf and appropriate dowel, and make clear pencil marks for where the next two holes should be.

Here’s the shelf with the finished drill holes. Because the drill holes have to be drilled at the perfectly straight angle that the dowels on the shelf will be at, I had to wiggle the drill bit around to get this step right. But before I completely push the entire floating shelf in…

I add a bit of wood glue to each dowel, coating the sides and top.

Finished!

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Very excited about the new shelves!

And the little artist loves her evolving nook here in the corner, she’s already getting plenty of use out of the table, chairs and art supplies. I need to come up with a better solution for that roll of paper! That guy flies just about everywhere, leaving a happy trail of paper behind.

Oops! I just realized that one of the rings on the coral curtains has popped off! Need to add that to the to-do list.

The nursery is sloowly evolving into a big girl room

More Project Nursery posts found here: tree branch bookshelf inspiration, newly updated felt mobile, a new reading nook part 1, finished after photos, no sew fabric pennant, baby clothing art, handmade felt butterfly mobile, DIY crib skirt, basket liners part 1, part 2, the, glider makeover, recovering an ottoman, sewing lined curtains part 1, part 2, part 3, curtain fabric selection, nursery fabric board, rocking horse find, new pendant light, new sconce lighting, vintage wall art addition, changing table makeover, nursery wall striping tutorial , painted animal project, the initial inspiration board breakdown, the before pictures

Building a Bathroom: Chevron Cloth Bag

I left this out of yesterday’s post! But just in case any of you are interested in taking advantage of a sweet little offer from Nicole over at NikJDesigns for a cloth bag (a seriously awesome storage solution), please check out her site and use code: PEPPERDESIGNBLOG15 for an extra 15% off.

I wasn’t paid or perked to share this, but loved her work so much that I wanted to be sure I extended to you the promo code that she offered up for all readers .

This bag can serve so many functions for us (you should see her adorable patterns for kids rooms, etc – great way to wrangle toys) but the subtle grey and white is just the right color scheme for the space and to hold a few extra towels for guests.

Here are a couple of additional shots:

The top edges roll down to reveal the fabric inside:

And the entire bag is actually reversible, which is pretty cool too:

Check out Nicole’s store here, and tell her I sent you : ).

PS You can see the finished guest bathroom and read abut the renovation process right here!

Building a Bathroom: Finished!

BIG news to share today, the guest bathroom is finished!

There are a few odds and ends that are still on the to-do list, like hanging hooks for damp towels, a large blank wall space that might potentially find itself with artwork or shelving in the future, etc. but for the most part we are calling it Finished! as of April 15, 2012.

Here’s a shot coming into the bathroom from Liv’s room. Because the space used to be three adjoining closets, now the bathroom opens up to both her nursery as well as the hallway for guests.

On any given day, we have silly bath time (Liv Loves bath time!) and then wrap her up in a fluffy towel and carry the little burrito into her room to get dressed.

The lighting in these photos is really reading ‘blue’, but the actual space is much more turquoisey blue.

There are so many details that I love about the room, but most importantly that  every element was picked out, installed and fussed over by us. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that as a team you accomplished the entire space together! With lots of patience, creativity and sweat equity.

Here’s a shot of the opposite wall with our recycled glass shower nook and single pane door:

Take a peek into the shower and bathtub. It’s so awesome to have a bathtub in the house now! We installed brushed nickel hardware throughout, from the sink faucet to the  shower and bathtub hardware.

The grey grout brings in a little modern edge, helps to keep the tile grout from getting noticeably old (as white grout tends to do over the years) and matches our silver accents as well. For a full 360 degree view, here’s a glance at the other side of the shower.

A few recent bath additions include a new mat in a soft turquoise color (matches the walls and tile perfectly) with a white damask print. I was so over the moon to come across it on Joss & Main!

Adds the perfect amount of eye-catching pattern. Although I must admit, the bright white of the damask means that I’m throwing it in the wash every week.

Other favorite details include my new art, two pieces that I scoured Etsy for for a long time and finally settled on for their calming color scheme and artistic vibe. I really searched these guys out… talk about indecisiveness! But I love my final prints and I loved working with the artists first hand.

The yellow and grey watercolor featuring organic roses and grey leaves is by Stephanie Ryan:

While the beautiful, overexposed ocean print is by Honey Tree.

Sorry, it was hard to not get a glare on that guy. I really love both, but Kevin is a little uncertain on that bright pop of turquoise in the ocean print. We’ll see how it sits with us for a few weeks and may end up changing the picture to something else (and I’ll have to find another awesome spot to showcase the photo).

When it comes to framing, I find that ordering custom frames and mats online is always much more cost effective – plus you get the exact sizes that you need rather than what’s on the floor at Aaron’s Brothers or Michaels (though I use those sources plenty, too). I highly recommend this eBay seller for really great, inexpensive mats and professional frames.

Nicole of NikJDesigns was wonderful to work with! I brought her the idea of creating an Anthropologie-esq fabric bucket with handles for the bathroom (inspired by this guy) to act as extra towel storage, and this is what she created for me:

It’s a soft, malleable bag that holds three rolled towels perfectly. It can actually be flipped inside out or you can roll the top down several inches to reveal the creamy white fabric inside.

We used silver accents for the faucet hardware but brought in bits of gold and oil rubbed bronze in the form of a few decorative pieces, like this DIY gold mercury vase:

Really helps to warm the cool space up.

The new hardware on the door (which Kevin just finished stripping, sanding and painting this weekend) matches our kitchen door hardware and we’ll try to eventually bring in the oil rubbed bronze throughout the house.

I changed out the factory knobs on the vanity for these Anthro options and I really love what they add.

They’re a beautiful bone color that works perfectly with all of the white in the space, the bold black stripe matches some of the darker hardware. Hoping to eventually add either these towel hooks in linen or a set of brushed silver.

Another favorite is the natural light the new tube skylight brings in. Having natural light in this space makes all the difference.

Big, huge kudos to Lowe’s who helped us make it happen. This was a renovation that would have been much further down the budgeting line for us, but the awesome team over at Lowe’s asked if they could help sponsor a project and we couldn’t find a more fitting room to tackle! As you know if you’ve followed the space from gutted closets to finished bath, we used Lowe’s for nearly all of the product throughout, from the WaterSense toilet to the radiant heating in the floors to the plumbing in those walls. Kohler ended up sponsoring an air jet tub that is out of this world! I have no idea how we ended up as the lucky blog recipient of their team’s generosity, but I am enormously grateful that we were chosen.

It’s hard to believe it all started with three hall closets!! Here’s the gutted version of the closets:

And a peek at the three closets and old hallway from the bedrooms before demo began:

That wall is actually now this wall:

More on the painter’s tape design and chalkboard transformation here.

For a better visual on how those three closets and hallway became a new bathroom, here’s the floor plan before we started (the closets are in the very center in white):

And how it all came together after:

Here’s a list of our resources:

*Shower glass tile: Elida Ceramica recycled glass tile in Moonlight
*White subway tile: American Olean subway tile
*Vanity: Java Broadway by Estate with a Kohler white sink
*Vanity faucet: Moen Caldwell in brushed nickel
*Vanity knobs: Black and white striped bone knobs by Anthropologie
*Vanity light: Portfolio
*Vanity mirror: thrift store find
*Toilet: Kohler WaterSense toilet
*Air jet bathtub: Kohler
*Tub and shower faucet: Moen Caldwell in brushed nickel
*Skylight: VELUX tubular skylight
*Radiant heating: Watts SunTouch Underfloor Warming Mat
*Floor tiles: Metro Leather porcelain tile by Arizona Tile
*Frameless glass door: Bob’s Glass (a San Diego mom & pop shop)
*Chevron print bath bag: NikJDesigns
*Framing for bath art: Tabby7
*Ocean print: Honey Tree
*Roses watercolor: Stephanie Ryan
*Parisian bath mat: Joss & Main (though it was a daily deal find)
*Wall paint: Sea Salt Blue by Valspar

So, so very thrilled with the end result, and so happy to have our new bathroom-built-from-scratch finished!

Follow the entire renovation adventure: installing the glass panel shower door,  a vintage mirror, installation time, vanity wars, subway tile installation, floor tiles and toe warmers, a quick catch-up on our work on the bathroom in 2011, tiling with recycled glass, choosing and installing a bathtub, demo time!, a peak at the layout, initial inspiration, partnering with Lowe’s

We partnered with Lowe’s on our bathroom remodel and had the opportunity to try out some of their product at no cost and some product at a discount. The ideas and stories shared in this post are entirely our own, promise.