lucy's book wall

We have been living in our new home for about 6 months and are just now getting around to organizing and nesting. We have been busy getting each of our rooms unpacked (yes we still haven't unpacked everything yet!) and decorated. In the weeks and months ahead I will be sharing a number of our DIY projects and peeks into our home.

First on our list was to tackle Lucy's room. Her room is small so we are limited with floor space but desperately need a way to store things- especially her growing collection of books! Just about the only option we had for storing and displaying her books was a book wall- or little ledge shelves that the books can rest on. Thankfully I have a structural engineer for a husband (actually a structural engineer turned stay at home dad) and he is quite handy when it comes to building things. 

I explained to him what I wanted and he came up with his own version of a ledge shelf. He used 1x3 and 1x2 inch wood to create shelves that were big enough for books but didn't stick out too far. (see Andy's sketch above)

There are a number of different ways to create ledge shelves and you can find all kinds of great tutorials all over the web with variations. See HERE, HERE and HERE

We wanted the ledge shelves to go all the way up the wall so Andy made four shelves that measured 3 feet long. Once the shelves were assembled we filled the nail holes with wood filler, sanded them down and then I white washed the wood.

Next, using anchor screws we hung the shelved 16 inches apart.

Once they shelves where installed we filled them with books!

tea towel animals from sarah young   big bunny made by me

We LOVE how the wall turned out- it is such a wonderful way to keep things organized and a fun way to use books as art. Lucy also LOVES the wall- she loves to stand on her tippy toes and grab a book.