Reclaimed Wood Hanging Shelf

Hi all! I’m April from Uncookie Cutter and I’m excited to be guest hosting here on Old House to New Home. I wanted to share with you all my new hanging shelf that I’m in love with. It was a really quick and easy project that has a huge impact.

We moved to Oklahoma in January from Virginia. I wanted a new house in a new neighborhood and what we ended up with was an old fixer upper in a wonderful older neighborhood. So far we are unexpectedly loving every minute of it. One of the great things is I just keep finding cool stuff in the yard to make into furniture, like my tree stump end table.

I found this beautiful piece of wood leaning on an old fence post when we first moved in, so grabbed it but had no idea what I was going to do with it.

 

I looked at it for awhile, and recently started working on our dining table. I thought this would be a cool looking sideboard for the table. I originally thought about doing iron pipes for legs, like my friend Emily did HERE. I love her table, but iron pipes are pricey and I’ve used them a bit around this space, so I kept thinking.

I’ve got an industrial thing sort-of-kind-of going on in here, so chain kept entering into my thoughts. Chains are industrial, right? When I built my rope shelves, I thought about using chain, but decided to stick with the rope. Then it hit me, why not turn this piece of wood into a hanging shelf/sideboard/thing-y with chain? Easy peasy!

First, I started sanding, sanding, sanding. That took some time, because it was in kind of rough shape. I used all different kinds of sanders, just going until is was nice and smooth. The sanding will also help get any “friends” out that are living in the wood. I also had the exterminator hit it with his special juice when he was here a while back, just to make sure.

Then I drilled four holes into the board. I tried to make them as even and square as I could.

I know they don’t LOOK even, but they actually are a rectangle. This will make a difference when we go to hang it.

Now it’s time to stain. I really wanted it to stand out against the wall, so I went dark with a couple of coats of Minwax Jacobean.

Next I filled the cracks and gaps with epoxy. If used correctly, it does a nice job. You have to work quick, but I really like using it because it makes the board much sturdier and will give you a nice, even surface.

After filling, I immediately scraped the excess off so it’s smooth. You have to work quick, it dries fast. Just mix a little at a time.

Then a little more sanding.

Then three coats of Polyurethane and the board was done.

I looked up and a sideboard in a dining room sits 36″ normally. So I marked that spot on the wall. I looped the chain through the holes so it holds it underneath, then I just sorta held the chains until I thought it looked “right”. So a bunch of measuring and math, I found the middle of the wall and the exact places for my two wall hangers.

Here’s a little hint on drywall anchors. I love this kind and despise the kind where you drill and hole and hammer in a bracket that is supposed to open up and grip the wall. Those only work about half the time for me and I end up throwing them and becoming an angry mess with big holes in my wall. I realize it’s probably user error-but I have never once messed these up. They are pretty much fool proof. First I drill a small hole, just to start and make sure I’m not on a stud. If I hit a stud, great! No need for an anchor. But if there is no stud, I just screw these in with a simple screwdriver and then they are ready to go.

Then I just screw my hangers on, loop the chain on and that was it! I found both the hangers and chain at Wal-Mart. I had to bend the chain a bit and take off a bunch of extra, but that was easy.

So, one more note, I also had to do a bunch of touch ups. I painted the screws holding the hangers up black to match. And I had a few spots on the wall, so those had to be touched up as well.

NOW I was done. Wait, I had to add a bunch of pretty things.

Now? Yep…done

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It makes a pretty nice “sideboard” and a unique addition for very little money. I used leftover stain and poly (it didn’t take much at all) and so all I bought was chain and hangers- less that $10. And if you need stain and poly, you could just get those little samplers and the whole project would cost you less than $20. I love inexpensive projects and this Reclaimed Wood Hanging Shelf is the perfect example of one!

Once I got it all set up, I brought in my new dining table. Check out all the details on how I built the concrete top table HERE!

Thanks for reading and I’d love for you follow me on social media!

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Thanks so much for having me, Amanda!

Have a wonderful day!

April