My NEW Bookshelves! (and how to make them!)

Last night I uploaded this video showing you my new shelves!

Today I wanted to go into a bit more detail on how I did them!

    

Here's what the boxes looked like before they were painted and stained! I went to Joann's to buy them (they were on sale for $9 a piece) but I know you can find that at Walmart too!

This was the stain I used, but you can use whatever you like! I bought mine from Walmart (I probably should have bought the smaller can since I didn't even use half of this can!) I wanted the wood to look really dark to match my other shelf! 

Using a rag, (and wearing latex gloves) I wiped the stain all over the outside of the crates, but I was careful to not let any on the inside where I wanted the yellow to go! (I did make a few mistakes where the stain got inside, and that part required a few extra coats of yellow paint!)

      

Then I started painting! Sorry I dont have a picture of the paint I used! I grabbed the card with the shade of yellow I wanted, then told the nice lady at Walmart to please make me just a cheap little can of that color. Nothing fancy. It was pretty inexpensive! 

I also bought a cheap brush and one of those foam brushes. I'll tell you right now, use the foam brush!! It took me around 30-40 minutes to paint the first box with a normal brush, but half of that time with a foam brush! As you can see there are gaps in between the boards, and the bristles kept moving into the gap and putting paint where I didn't want there to be paint! But the foam brushes don't have bristles so you don't have that problem!

  

After everything was painted (it took me quite a while to paint all eight!) I used wood glue to attach the crates together! (Notice how I didn't stain the parts of the crates that I knew would be hidden? Lazzzyyyy. Or am I just smart?) 

Anyways, I would recommend NOT overdoing it and putting on too much glue or you will have it coming out the sides and that doesn't look very good! After I glued it Jake was worried that it might not be enough, so he put in some SUPER tiny nails. Like barely longer than a tack size! (I obviously didn't want them going through the other side and stabbing my books!)

On the directions it said to clamp the wood that you're glueing together for an hour to get the best results. Well I didn't have any clamps, but I DID have heavy books! So after I was sure that the glue wouldn't be dripping out onto my books, I stacked up some of my heaviest books and set the timer for an hour! (Note: PLEASE make sure that you don't have glue coming out of the sides before you put your books on your shelves. Nobody wants their books covered in glue!)

   

Since I had to wait an hour, I decided it was time to move my books! Oh boy, was this a workout! 

I knew that only some of my books would fit on these new shelves (and the other wood one) so I made one pile of my favorite books and the ones I wanted on display. Then in the other pile, I put the books that would be shunned to the office to be placed on the black shelf!

An hour and a half later (yes I waited a little longer just to be safe), I put my new shelves in place!

This was the point where I started filming my video! 

And this was the final result! Overall, I'm very happy with how they turned out!! I love the dark brown and yellow (which also just happens to be my favorite color) I love that it's more symmetrical than it was before too! (Jake even loves it! Yay!)

Let me know if you have any questions or if I left out any information you need to know to make your new shelves!