DIY Floating Shelves

Hello! If you saw my previous post, then you know I've been helping my neighbor with her bathroom refresh! She wanted to add floating shelves above her toilet, so here's how we did it -

Here is where her bathroom started! Scroll to the end to see it finished!

We used 1x8 pine for the top and bottom of each shelf and 1x3 pine for the front and sides. The goal of a floating shelf is basically to make a box that can slide over your cleat that is mounted to the wall, so brackets or mounting hardware are hidden.

To make our box, I rotated my saw blade to 45 degrees and cut one of my 1x3s at this angle. I chose to make my first cut about 14" from the end of my board. This gave me two pieces to use to fit my shelf.

Then I cut a 1x8 1.5" shorter than I wanted my shelf to be. In this case, I wanted my shelves to each be 18" long, so I cut the 1x8 to be 16.5". This leaves me 3/4" on each side for my 1x3.

With the two pieces of 1x3 I cut earlier, I laid out my pieces to see where my next cuts should be.

I marked the front 1x3 at the end of the 1x8 with pen, so I knew where to make my second 45-degree angle cut.

I also marked the side 1x3 at the back of the 1x8 so I know where to make a straight cut.

Not all my mitered corners were meeting up perfectly, so using the same 45-degree angle on my saw, I took a sliver off the inside of each corner but lifted my blade before I got to the end of the cut, so the outside corner remained the same (see below). This made my mitered corner line up perfect!

You can see where I cut and stopped before I got to the end.

Once all my cuts were done, I glued and nailed each piece together with 1.25" brad nails in my nail gun.

Here are my finished boxes!

I used wood shavings from my dust collection bag on my saw and wood glue to fill the nails holes and small gaps from where I took a sliver off each inside corner.

I just squirted a little wood glue on each spot that I wanted to fill and sprinkled some wood shavings over top and then patted it down with my finger. After the glue dried and I sanded each shelf with 220 sandpaper, it looks like a solid piece of wood!

To attach the boxes to the wall, you need to have a cleat to slide them on top of, so they can become shelves. To make my cleats, I used scrap 1x2. I cut a 1x2 just over 16.25" and then clamped it to my work bench. I predrilled holes on each end of the 1x2, so that the screws I use to attach the cleat to the wall won't split the ends off.

Next, I cut 3 smaller pieces of 1x2 to 5". These will attach to my longer 1x2 to make my cleat.

I used my Kreg Jig to make pocket holes into each 5" piece and attached them to the longer 16.25" piece with 1.25" screws. I made sure to leave enough room on each side for me to be able to fit my drill next to each 5" piece without hitting them when I went to install the cleats.

I totally forgot to get a picture of the cleats installed, but here is a snippet. As you can see from the screws on each side of the cleat in the picture above, that is where I screwed into the wall. I made sure to use my stud finder first, so that each screw would go into a stud behind the drywall.

Then I just slide each box over top of the cleat! I used my nail gun to attach each shelf to the cleat from the top - one nail on each side.

I stained the shelves and curtain rod Minwax Honey. You can see how I made the curtain rod HERE.

What do you think of this transformation!?