Wood Shelves in the Bedroom

Happy Hump Day, friends! Have you all been having a good week so far? After a fun Oscar Party with my family on Sunday, I got to play hooky from work on Monday to hang out with my Aunt who was in town staying with me. We went up to Whidbey Island and explored some little shops and an old military fort. And let me just say, it was the most gorgeous perfect day that you could ask for, especially considering it is February in the Pacific Northwest! Here’s hoping that all the snow where our east coast friends are melts soon so you can experience gloriousness like this (apologies for any jealousy and rage these photos may cause you):

Ahhh, perfection. But now I’m back to work and back to completing projects around our house! One project that I’ve been meaning to get done for a while now is to put up some wood shelves in our master bedroom. I wanted a nice place to put our trinkets and treasures and add some visual interest to the wall, so a couple of weekends ago, my hubby and I made a trip to Ikea and picked up these:

We choose 2 plain untreated pine wood shelf boards and 4 black Ekby Valter shelf brackets. I had originally wanted a different style, but they were sold 0ut and this was a nice backup. (Weirdly, my local Ikea seems to always be out of stock of the things I want… does that ever happen to you guys??) Anyway, these wood shelves are just fine as is, but I prefer my wood colors to a be a more medium, richer tone.

To achieve a prettier brown, I used my go-to stain: Rust-Oleum’s wood stain in Early American. It’s a really nice middle tone that isn’t too warm or too cool – you might remember it from my crate console table and my Ikea side table makeover! The kind I get comes in an easy-squeeze applicator bottle, so no messy paint cans and lids! Huzzah! I just squirted some of the stain onto a rag and rubbed it onto my pine boards, going with the grain. I let the boards dry over night and then it was time to add the hardware.

The shelves come with a little piece of paper that says, for maximum stability, the wall brackets can’t be farther than 31 inches apart. So hubby and I followed their rules and measured out from the center where each bracket should go. As I’ve mentioned before, we have two rambunctious kitty cats who like to jump on things, so I knew we need these shelves to be as sturdy as possible! PS, the wall brackets don’t come with screws, so you’ll have to get your own!  We used 6×1 wood/drywall screws for putting the brackets into the shelves and then a 6×2 wood/drywall screw to hang the brackets on our wall.

My husband and I have a system for when we hang things up. I’m the one who holds up the shelves and keeps them level while he works the screwdriver and gets them into the wall. I think I’ve gained some muscles after holding up our master closet pipes, our bedroom canopies, and now these shelves!

The top screws had to be put in by hand because the wood shelves covered up part of the hole, making it difficult to use the power screwdriver. Why, Ikea? But other than that, they were a breeze to put up. I gathered some knick-knacks and treasures from around my house and put them up on the shelves to make them look complete!

I really love the way these new wood shelves look in our master bedroom! It definitely feels super adult and professional to have real shelves on the walls with things on them. Haha. Crazy!

This is just my first, rag-tag rush at styling these shelves – we put them up a couple hours before my aunt came over to stay with us and I’ve realized that I don’t actually have that many decor items lying around! What! I definitely need to take a little shopping trip, methinks. haha. But what I do have are very special possessions of mine and my husband’s that show off our life together 🙂

No, those aren’t ashes in that glass vase… that’s the sand from the unity ceremony at our wedding! Underneath it are several of my journals from over the years, all the way back to when my husband and I were only dating! I also put up a photo of us from the Tulip Festival this past year, which is an annual tradition, and a candle from one of our many candle shopping dates 🙂

The two little gold llamas are treasures I picked up while I lived a summer in Ecuador. I got one for me and one for my then-boyfriend-now-husband so that we each could have one and while we were apart we would each have a llama to represent our strong bond. (Think the turtle doves in Home Alone 2 haha). The little figurines are Daenerys and Drogo from Game of Thrones (shout out to my fellow GoT fans!) and they are made by the company my husband works for. You may have noticed little figures like this in other posts all over our house!

The globe cut out is the very first project I ever made with my new Silhouette Cameo! I’m definitely going to be decorating our whole house with more Cameo projects as fast as I can make them! Another thing I really love is owls and other little woodland animals like foxes. You’ll find tons of owls and foxes all over our home and the bedroom is no exception! My mama got me this cute votive holder for Christmas a few years back. And of course nothing is complete without a little succulent!

I really love the visual interest these wood shelves add to our room and they are a great place to display things that are so meaningful to us. I have no doubt that the look of these shelves will change over time as we gain new treasures and move stuff around, but this is how they look for right now and I absolutely love it! Now I just need to find a good comfy chair or bench to put underneath them and then my cozy corner will be complete!

What kind of treasures do you store on your shelves?