Jack's Bookshelves.

Jackson's nursery is coming together. Don't worry, he'll only be a year old in less than a month.

I knew that I wanted to have bookshelves in Jackson's room. I wanted him to love books as much as his parents do and to be able to pick out the ones that he wanted to read. I found this awesome plan for bookshelves on Ana White's website (only the coolest DIY furniture site known to man). I purchased 2 1x4's in order to make two 2 1/2 foot shelves. We had some 1 x 2 furring strips for another project lying around and used those for the lip on the front. It was a simple project, especially for our fist wood-working project!

I followed Ana's instructions completely, so I'd check out her plan. But, I'll go ahead and give you a play-by-play here.

Time Commitment: 1 hour

Cost: around $10 (enough material for three 2 1/2 foot shelves)

Tools: (I got all of mine at Lowe's)

2 1x4's at 8 feet long
1 1x2 furring strip
2 in finishing nails
2 in wood screws
Stain or paint
Drill
Square
Pencil
Sander
Circular saw
Old cloth

1. Measure out how long you want your shelves to be on the 1x4s. I chose 2 1/2 foot shelves, so I marked it with a square and cut. I'd recommend marking and cutting separately for each piece. As you won't cut exactly on the line every time, this will make sure all the pieces are as close to 2 1/2 feet as possible.

Note: Wear safety googles! (Or sunglasses if you don't have safety goggles...) Unless, you want wood shavings in your eyes, of course. (Really not fun)

 2. Sand down your pieces with a finishing sander with 150 grit sandpaper. You could use coarser or finer if you'd like, but I stuck right in the middle, since I'll be sanding again when they are finished.

 3. Use wood screws and a square to attach the 1x4s. You should probably use some wood glue, but I forgot. Whoops!

 4. Use finishing nails, wood glue and a hammer to attach the 1x2 to the front of the shelf.

 5. Sand again with 220 grit sandpaper.

 Woo Hoo! You just built a shelf! I stained mine, so I just slapped some good ole' Rustoleum American Walnut stain on there, let it sit for 20 minutes and wiped it down with an old cloth. I repeated that a second time to make the stain a little bit darker, but it didn't quite work as expected.

Then we just screwed them into the wall! (Do not try to use anything but screws directly into the wall. It will not work. Not like we tried...duh.)

The little man loves them :) And so do I. So everyone's happy :)

And Happy Halloween!