Week 4 Update: The Shelf Files

Here we are in week 4 already of our $100 Room Challenge and I am thanking my lucky stars that this month has 5 Wednesdays in it! Need a quick recap? The $100 Room Challenge is hosted by the lovely Erin over at Lemons, Lavender & Laundry and is featuring a group of awesome bloggers. We are showing you how you can transform a space with only $100 and things you already have on hand!

Here’s what’s been accomplished so far:

• Finish mudding & sanding
• Prime and paint the walls
• Touch up baseboards & trim
• Build some shelves
• Get or make some hockey inspired wall art to hang
• DIY a hockey stick hanger
• clean the junk out of his room!

In all honesty, I’m a total procrastinator. I hammer out my best work the day/night before a deadline. So it’s not entirely surprising that I have a few half completed projects on the go and will probably only get them finished up next week!

One of those projects is getting some shelves built for the room. He didn’t have anywhere to stick his medals and trophies, other than a little ledge I had put up for Lego initially. The kid is also a total tchotchke lover and collects items like a grandma. All those items usually end up under his bed or in his closet.

There isn’t much selection when it comes to shelf hardware in our area. My cheapest option was Wal-Mart & at $10 a bracket the shelves weren’t looking like they would be cheap. That’s $40 on brackets alone, talk about a huge chunk of my budget! When a friend said she was headed to IKEA (which is inconveniently 4 hours away) I jumped online and found these EKBY BJARNUM Bracket for $10 a pair.

I figured I would use some of the wood I had in my stockpile to make the shelf. Welllllll… these brackets are 1″ wide, and if you know standard wood width, you’ll know that it’s only 3/4″ thick, so that sucked. But then IKEA came to the rescue again! We had bought a FJELLSE single bed frame years ago for one of the kids. Carter had been using it most recently until we bought him a bigger bed, so instead of getting rid of the frame, I broke it down and had been using it to make signs with. Well shit, the frame of the bed measured a true 1″ thick! Although the board was not wide enough, I knew I would be able to join a couple of pieces together to get the width I needed. See, it pays not to throw stuff out sometimes!

After a broke the frame down a bit more, I cut the wood down to 27″. I glued along the edge of two pieces and then clamped them together. Once dried, I gave them a good sand and then stained them with Minwax Gel Stain in Coffee. I didn’t realise how beat up the boards were until I stained them. I opted not to sand them down super smooth because I liked the rustic beat up look they had & I was also feeling lazy. Right now the shelves are half done.

I also printed out some awesome prints I found on Etsy and initially glued them down to some foam core board. They are extremely underwhelming and not at all what I pictured in my mind, so I’m gonna have to brainstorm a bit more.

Here’s the dent I’ve made so far in my $100 budget:

• Drywall mud: $0.00 – had on hand
• Primer: $0.00 – had on hand
• Paint and new roller – $48.76
• Magnet Board: $0.00 – already had hanging
• White Vinyl: $0.00 – had on hand
• Shelf Brackets: $21.00 for 2 sets
• Wood for Shelfs: $0.00 – already had in the scrap pile
• Hockey Printables from Etsy: $16.44
• Foam Core Board: $0.00 – already had on hand

Total so far: $86.20

Want to see more? Check out my progress in Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.

Don’t forget to check out the other greats rooms below!