Lego Shelves

My sons are Lego fanatics.

Our house runneth over with Legos.  Legos are all they ask for at Christmas, birthdays, and when they want to spend money earned from jobs.  With four boys, that equals a lot of Legos. In order to prevent all of their creations from ending up like this.....

We built shelves away from little hands.  I look at this bucket and think of the hundreds of dollars sitting in a bucket from my first son.  It's all good though, because this is where they come up with their own creations. Which is the beauty of Legos!

We love this "City Lego" line too much to see it end up in pieces. The boys love pulling all of the sets down and playing with them. Hours and hours of fun!  So, with the help of my second Lego loving son, we put together simple shelves over this past Christmas break to give the Legos a home.  

We used inexpensive black shelf brackets from Home Depot and (1x8) pine boards.  We love the deep boards, they work well to hold the large Lego sets. My son helped me stain each board with a grey stain from Minwax. We put the brackets up and secured each board with screws.  Super easy! 

My sons love the shelves.  They are the official designated spot in the house to proudly display (& protect) all Legos....spoiled boys I tell you! How about you?  Do you have any great Lego storage ideas? 

We found this clever idea of how to store and organize Lego directions at meredithanderic.blogspot.com. I put my son to work on that project too!

Nicole and I are getting together tomorrow to work on a few Spring projects.  We are so ready for Spring!

Chicken Wire Wall Shelf

  

This is another shameless copy of a shelf Nicole and I saw in a store. 

 I think they wanted over 70 bucks for  it. 

We took a trip to the hardware store and made it with

a couple of cedar fence boards, chicken wire, hinges.... and a little finial to top it all off. 

 Much cheaper, and that's for two!

I will not lie...those darn pitches on the roof were incredibly hard to figure out how to cut. 

There were a few choice words said today and this shelf was almost not meant to be.

Seriously, I don't even know how we even got the angles,

We just kept cutting.....and cutting.....and cutting......and yes, more cutting.

We almost tossed it aside.....(well actually I had some grand fantasies about taking a hammer to it....)

but we were stubborn...and you can fix about anything with wood filler! :)

We made a couple more of the Celluclay Pots from a previous post.  We didn't paint these ones, instead we sanded them down after the Celluclay dried to let a little of the terracotta color peek out.

I'm telling you...that is cool stuff! 

 

We forgot to buy knobs for the doors, so we painted some GOLF TEES with spray paint,

drilled a few holes and stuck them in.

I kinda like the look of them. 

 

Of course I had to match my bird house, so I whipped out my left over paint.

After painting it all ,we lined the doors

and the roof with chicken wire. 

Does anyone have a great way to put chicken wire on?  Do you all use staples? 

 

The shelf is meant to hang on a wall, like a mini potting shed...I haven't gotten around to it yet. 

 

Nicole used her table saw to rip the cedar boards.

  The 1 inch excess is what we used to build the doors. 

 

I was in awe of how Nicole figured out how to make the doors. 

She built the base first, and fit the doors to the back.  She made it look so easy! 

 

Now for some real flowers in those pots!

We're linking to,

http://thecsiproject.com/

 because "almost"  all of the supplies, we found at the hardware store! :)

Ballard Designs Shelf Redo!

SO...I've been reading about all the fun and thrifty ideas Sarah at the thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com has, and this Ballard Design shelf copy wowed me! On her blog she told how to redo the shelves, including cutting, trim, and more. Below is the actual picture from Ballard Designs.

Here are mine. I took the magazine with the dimensions into Home Depot on a slow Saturday night and batted my helpless eyes at some nice men who explained to me which moulding was used to wrap the shelves. Then I found Brian the nice lumber guy who willingly cut everything to the correct dimensions!! That sure saved some work. I think it always interests them when women, especially women with strollers, kids and a lot of lumber come into their store!? Anyway, they were very nice and helpful!

I decided to get a huge piece of MDF 3/4" and have the men slice it up into 10" deep, 5ft, 4ft, and 3ft wide shelves. Again, copying the dimensions, because copying is what I do best! I probably could have used 1/2" MDF, or pre-cut boards, but I wanted extra MDF for some other projects. I then found the moulding and corbels.

Because of feeding this little guy for 7 months, I've had a lot of time to sit at the computer and find this wonderful world of DIY bloggers. I have a large list of all the projects I plan to do!

Now... I had all this cut wood and wasn't confident enough to put it together...so I took my crazy idea over to my sister Nicole, expert wood cutter. We are like Yin and Yang. Our brains think alike, but Nicole is much more capable than I, she being my older sister. She enables me and I depend on her to help me finish my projects!

Nicole helped me cut and miter the corners with her miter saw! It's all about good tools. You can really do anything! She then helped me glue and nail gun them together. Definitely need two sets of hands!

Up next is filling in the gaps. I used wood putty, or you can use caulking. After patiently waiting for it to dry, I sanded away.

I then used spray paint primer first, and finished with several coats of semi-gloss trim paint. If I were really doing it right I would have used a paint sprayer. I didn't want to harass my sister again, so I just bought cans of spray paint.

Now, this hanging part scares me. With four boys in the house, I was nervous that things would fall down. I carefully found all the studs in the wall and marked them, and then with blue tape marked where the shelves belong. I stared at and arranged them many, many, times.

I then used a level as I hung them. VERY important!! It actually wasn't too bad, and I believe they are in there solid with wood screws into the studs.


Not so bad, if I say so myself! If we can do it, you can too!