How to Make a Simple Wall Shelf

My daughter asked me to make her a simple wall shelf for her new home. She has a modem box mounted in the middle of her wall with wires running down the wall to a table. The idea was to have a shelf mounted on the wall for the modem to sit in so she can get rid of the table which was in the way. She did not want anything fancy just a basic wall shelf.

The idea is the modem will sit in the bottom shelf and the top shelf would be used for small nick-nacks. I felt I had to add my personal touch which was adding the hooks and vinyl decals with her dog’s names on, to hang their leads on.

How to make a simple wall-mounted Shelf

Find suitable wood

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I have just finished building an outside wall mounted bar for the wall next to the spa for drinks and snacks while in the spa. The wood I used to make this shelf was leftover from that project. I used a jigsaw and cut away the wood from between the gaps. From past experience, it is too hard for me to take a pallet apart.

Clean up the wood

If you are using pallets like this project you will need to clean the wood first. I am lucky enough to have a wood planer which is a very quick and easy way to clean up your wood. If you do not have one you will need to sand the wood using a sander.

Size of wood needed

To clean up the sides, I use the table saw to remove a few millimetres of each side which leaves me with a clean edge.

Wood requirements

• 2 x 400 mm (L) x 90 mm (W) x 10mm (thick) these are the sides.
• 2 x 410 mm x 90 mm x 10 mm Back and shelf
• 1 x 420 mm x 90 mm x 10 mm
• 1 x 410 mm x 50 mm x 10 mm

Assemble the shelf

Start by joining the back of the first shelf and the bottom, do this for both of them. For a more secure joint, you can pre-drill a hole and screw the two pieces together while the glue is drying. I pre-drilled all the holes first because pallet wood is usually dry from being outside in the weather so it will split easily. If you don’t want to have screws visible on the outside of your shelf you can use a nail gun to secure the sides.

You can repeat the above step for the bottom shelf. To attach the base, drill holes in the bottom of the base, then add screws from below to hold the join together.

Add the last piece of wood which is the front support to hold the modem in place. Pre-drilled holes from below, then add some glue and screw in place. I secured the sides with the nail gun.

Adding the hardware

To get the correct position of the hardware you need to divide the length by how many hooks you want to add. My length was 410 mm, so that gets dived by 3 which equal 136.66. To get the first start point you divide 136.66 x 2.

The hooks for the dog leads were screwed into the sides of the shelf. I did make some vinyl decals using my Cricut vinyl cutter in the shape of a dog as my little personal touch.

This is the finished shelf, You can tell from the vinyl decal which dog is the pack leader. To hang the shelf you will need to add proper mountings. Because this shelf is not for me, I used a screw already in the wall for display purposes only.

This shelf can be used for many purposes such as a key rack, hat rack, mail rack whatever you need.

More Great projects

Are you looking for more great DIY ideas, check out this simple picnic bench.

How about this cool picnic table with a built-in ice trough. When you have parties the trough is filled with ice to store your drinks and keep them cold.

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