Building Kitchen Ledge Shelves

A few months after making the floating shelves in our bathroom, I decided to make ledged shelves in our kitchen, so glass items would not fall and plummet to their doom (or mine).  This was when I found Ana White's $10 ledges for the first time, the same plan that inspired the 1x2-thin toddler book ledges I built for my daughter's room more recently.

 We store our glasses on the little shelf next to our refrigerator and our magnetic measurement organizers. I chose the 4 glasses, my daughter has the 4 stainless steel glasses, and my husband selected two deep blue handblown glasses and 2 crystal drink glasses.  The tile work is mostly done, except for the area that hugs around our window sills and the trim I need to install around the edges.  I also need to purchase and screw in the outlet cover behind our tea pot.

Building these shelves did not take long, although choosing the color that would go best did.  I painted them teal, like the inside of our cabinet frames.  I let the teal sit for a month or two, so they were teal when we moved upstairs.  The shadows were not very forgiving for the teal, so I tried silver spray paint on the underside with teal on the top.  Then our kitchen screamed "DINER!" somehow.

I caved in and painted them a black-indigo color called Napoleon, the same paint on our Canvas Floor Cloth, C End Table, and Reclaimed Top Media Console.  :)  I didn't seal the Napoleon in case we changed our mind again, and I've dinged it a few times, letting silvery distressed flecks shine through.  =D We'll keep it!

	1x2 @ 6 ft. ($0.60, Re-Use Hawai'i) 1x8 @ 6 ft. ($3.60, Re-Use Hawai'i) 1x4 @ 6 ft. ($1.20, Re-Use Hawai'i)
	Ryobi 7.5" Miter Saw (already owned) Hitachi cordless drill (already owned) Kreg Jig Jr. Pocket Hole Jig and Drill bit (already owned) 1 1/4" Kreg pocket hole screws (already owned) Measuring tape, pen (already owned)

Here's how we made ours:

The shelves in my kitchen cost me $5.40 out of pocket using reclaimed lumber from a deconstruction warehouse.

I decided to cut 45 degree miters for the inner corners for the corner shelves. 

I left the imperfections of the wood visible, because it is reclaimed and I did not want to hide the fact.

At the time I assembled this shelf, I was playing with my daughter in my mom's downstairs house, so the flooring is different.  :)

I put up tile in the spring time of this year, so we've been using these shelves since the first day we moved upstairs.

Be careful to choose a drill bit only as wide as the inner shaft of the anchor screw, otherwise, the screw tread will have no wood to grip into.

And now we have simple, inexpensive ledge shelves for our kitchen:

Love them!

All our kitchen projects

Link Party @

I Heart Naptime // If It's Not Baroque // I Gotta Create // Stone Gable // The Blissful Bee // Lamberts Lately // Ana White, Ten Dollar Ledges