our living room wall is HUGE. and of course, there’s a big fireplace in the middle so there isn’t room for a large credenza or console. just one cute skinny fireplace right smack in the middle.

the boyfriend and i spent a month going over how this would look and be configured. drawings and measurements and arguing. we wanted something useful but tasteful, and pipe shelving seemed too permanent and complex (but we loved the look). so we settled happily on this, with custom measured/cut/stained shelving to compliment the wood of our floors and the black of the brackets.

the best part of doing custom is that we were able to customize each shelf in consideration of size and contents, so we specifically measured for the TV, the record player, and the campaign rast. (and we can change the height of shelves whenever)

i believe i drew this sketch 50 times before we settled on the design.

WALL MOUNTED SHELVING

six twin track 70″ uprights

26 brackets

12 pieces of wood at 3/4″ thick :

(4 long)

(2 medium)

(6 small)

wood stain

the project was all about the planning. it would have been a lot easier had we been able to just do one big unit without the fireplace, but we wanted to make each side symmetrical without being identical.

we configured on paper (like i said, fifty times) where the uprights and the shelves would sit, and had the wood cut in three sizes.

we then hung the uprights after measuring and remeasuring and leveling and stud finding and all that boring stuff.

and then i sanded and stained 12 pieces of wood. we live in an apartment with a small balcony. so yeah. that took a day.

once all the wood was ready to go and we then decided where each shelf would go, and screwed the brackets to the shelves. and that’s about it!

sawed, stained, delivered … it’s shelves!