How to Make Rustic Wood Shelves – A DIY Guide

As most of you know, Quimi and her husband Aaron have been remodeling their home for a while now. My mom, dad and I also moved to a new home and we’ve been renovating different parts of it as well! Renovation can be really fun because you get to put your own spin on the decor of your home. Since we moved, my mom wanted to really make the house her own and add things that would make it how she likes it.

Over the past year, we redid our living room, which meant adding wood beams and renovating the fireplace, painting walls and tearing down a wall, then getting new decor to spruce up the place. We didn’t really renovate the entire house but just little things here and there that we wanted to be more modern and updated.

One thing that my mom and I really wanted to do was do a DIY on some wood shelves! We really liked the look of this and wanted to add them to this little nook we have in the living room. It is super easy and doesn’t require a lot of time to do at all! The price for all of our supplies was around $70 to $75 bucks which is a really good deal for doing it all on your own!

Instead of having to install real shelves and have it take forever, we decided that doing DIY rustic shelves would really bring the whole living room look together! There are so many ways you can go about this but we thought we’d share our tips and tricks on how we made it work!

Supplies you will need:

• 4 Galvanized steel pipes
• 4 caps
• 4 floor flanges
• 8 screws
• 2 Wood pieces for the shelves (cut to the size you would like)
• 1 can of the color wood stain you prefer

Step by Step

Step 1: Gather all your supplies

We went to Lowe’s to buy our steel pipes, now at our Lowe’s they had the pipes in the darker chrome stain you will see in the picture above. I know some Lowe’s or home improvement stores may not, but ours did so that was an easy step for us! But, if they do not have them in that color, you can easily spray paint your steel pipes! We chose to get pipes that are 11 1/2 inches long that way the shelf fits perfectly on there with just a little bit of the bolt coming out. Step 2: Decide how long you’d like your wood shelves

Basically what you have to decide is how big you want your shelves to be. We wanted our shelves to be thick pieces and the length of our shelves are 10 inches wide by 47 inches long based on how wide our space was on the wall. If you use a leveler it will really help you to make sure everything is the same width apart and that your measurements are good. The width of the shelf gives enough space to add vases, books, and pictures on top, so depending on what you will be placing on the shelf is how wide you’d like your shelf. There is plenty of room for all those things on our shelves.

Step 3: Stain your wood shelves

After we bought our supplies, we stained our wood shelves this dark walnut color in the picture below and they look absolutely perfect!! You could definitely stain your wood any color you prefer, but we love this rustic stain, it’s just beautiful! We stained each wood piece with 2 coats of the wood stain, that’s what gave us the dark color! There are directions on the back of the can, but we added another coat after letting the first one dry for a bit. 

Step 4: Check for beams

Next, you will need to check for beams behind your walls… we found out that we didn’t have any in our walls so we got them put in and then measured to about 8 and 1/2 inches in on each side.

Step 5: Screw in flanges and twist on pipes with caps

With an electric screwdriver, screw in your flanges at the mark you made earlier when you checked for the beams. You’ll need 4 screws for each flange. Then you twist on your pipes and lastly twist on your caps!

Step 6: Place your wood shelves on top of your pipes

This is the last and final step and then you are ready to decorate! See how fast that was?! It is super simple but can make such a huge difference in the look of whatever space you decide to add them to. We could have totally added another shelf in this space if we wanted to, but we think it looks great how it came out! These wood shelves really revamped our living room and made it all come together! What is so cool about this DIY is that you can add these shelves anywhere in your house! You can put them in a bedroom or a hallway or the dining area, anywhere!

Let us know if you try out this DIY, we’d love to hear other ideas or ways you’ve renovated your home! -xoxo