DIY Week: DIY Two-Dollar Mini Shelves

I am a cheap person.  I'm not even going to euphemize (yeah that's a verb) it; I don't like spending money when I am sure I can make it myself.  Because I live in a rented apartment, everything I make for the home must be temporary; which is another reason for my cheapness.  But I do like my home, and some of the things we collected for it.  One thing that I HAD to have were these antique enamel coffee pots.  I don't know why I needed them, I just wanted them; and the desire to have them hit me in the chest while we were walking around the Aberfoyle Antique Market.  It was even hard to breathe.  Finally, D let me get them even though I put a moratorium on decorative things for the house.  Everything we need to bring into the house must have a purpose because we have such little space.  And I am not going to become my mother with her love of knick knacks and tchotchkes.  

ANYWAYS, I brought them home and they lived in the cupboard for a bit because we don't have room to display things.  So I challenged myself to make a space for my coffee pots near the kitchen, but I couldn't spend more than 2 dollars.  That's right, 2 bucks.

Thank goodness for IKEA, because they have these shelf brackets for one dollar each if you don't buy the shelf part.  So, I had the brackets, and I had some wood cut from a 5 dollar "handy-plank" I bought at Home Depot for another project.

The wood is really thin plywood, usually something I wouldn't use for a shelf, but these are just for coffee pots, so they didn't have to be very sturdy.  I thought they would work.

The brackets I bought were white, so I decided that the shelves would be white too.  Each piece of wood is cut to 8" by 10," really small.  Then I primed them with gesso, and painted them with acrylic paint in white.  I didn't sand or smooth the wood because I wanted it to look a little rustic.

I screwed the wood to the brackets, and the brackets to the wall.  Voila! Shelves for my antiques that cost less than two bucks.

Price breakdown:

Scrap wood pieces (had on hand)

Paint and gesso (had on hand)

2 Brackets (from IKEA for $1 each)

Screws (had on hand)

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= $2.00 for project

And I like them, they look like they belong there.  And I'm happy that I now have my shrine to coffee. 

This week I'll be blogging all the DIY projects that I saved up for:

I  hope you enjoy it!