DIY Narrow Shelving | The Record Wall

I love a good accent wall. I used to love just a simple stand out paint color, now, I love all the unique and quirkier things that you can do to really make a wall stand out.

My dad’s birthday is this week and while I do love getting gifts some of the best gifts are acts of service. In this case I’ll be using my creativity to muster up some DIY shelves to showcase his abundant record collection in our home office.

Since records are slim I want the shelves to be pretty narrow with a little lip so the records can lean and be minimally covered. I am envisioning a very narrow base to the shelf, maybe about 2” deep, with a slight lip on the front to catch the records from sliding off. While listening to my dad brainstorm with a friend, one of the biggest hurdles while he was shopping for shelving online was that all of them required him to put so many holes in the wall. Knowing that, I wanted to try to keep this as simple and as clean as possible- with minimal holes in the wall.

I also want the shelves to be long, the whole width of the wall, if possible, and I am thinking I will probably make about 4 or 5 total shelves. To keep the room child and guest friendly I think it would be best to stop the shelving about halfway down the wall and then create an interesting accent with a different paint color and some molding or wooden surfacing. My goal is to have it be interesting, put together, and very fun. I hope that when my dad sees the wall and walks past the room he can get that feeling we all love when there are certain spaces of our house that make us go, ahhhhh. You know? Like a breath of fresh air mixed with that feeling of comfort as you sink into your favorite chair.

Here are the materials I picked up:

8’ long x 2'“ deep - for the actual shelf

8’ long - x 3” deep - for the back of shelf (the part of the shelf that will be screwed into the wall)

4’ long round dowel rod - two of them to act as the front lip to allow records to lean

Gorilla wood glue

Along with the materials listed above, I also used clamps to hold everything together. My initial plan was to glue everything together and then once it was almost dry get some nails in there with a nail gun to hold everything in place. The overall process of making each shelf took longer than I anticipated because of the amount of clamps we ended up needing per shelf. I didn’t buy any extra and we only had enough to hold one shelf together at a time and the drying time for the glue was 24 hours.

To play it safe I decided we would just build one shelf at a time and then see how well they were assembled. Because these are relatively lightweight and will only be holding records or some art at any point we decided we didn’t need to go in with any nails. The wood glue worked amazingly and since I opted for cheaper wood my dad was a bit worried about it splintering if we went in with a nail gun. I don’t think it would have been an issue, as the wood was pretty soft, but we just skipped the process anyway.

It was a bit of a messy process and because they were so long having an extra pair of hands will be really helpful if you try to recreate these shelves. I had two saw horses out to hold the wood pieces up and glued one board to the other and held it in place while my dad assembled the clamps. Once the clamps were in place I went in with a rag and glided all the excess glue along the creases to try to fill any gaps and stop and lumps from forming. I repeated that same process with the small dowel rods and 24 hours later went on to repeat the process two more times.

Because I wanted to stop the records about half way down the wall there was only enough room for three shelves but I did buy enough material for there to be four, so there may be an extra shelf being made for another room in an upcoming post!

Once they were all assembled and clear and sturdy I lined them up on the saw horses and measured out where I wanted to drill them into the wall. I decided I would make three holes per shelf and knew I would use some drywall anchors. I went about a foot in from each end and an inch up from the bottom and then measured into half of the shelf for the third hole. I wanted everything to be as uniform as possible. This makes it a breeze when actually putting them up and doing any final measurements, especially when using an anchor. You really want those to line up the right way because they tear up the wall so much if they have to be removed.

I went in and predrilled all the holes in every marked spot on the shelves and just like that they were ready to be stained.

Picking the stain for the shelves was a little tricky because each wood piece was a different cut. If you go to the store and look at wood you will notice how different one piece can be compared to another. Everything ranges from texture and durability to how many knots and the shade of each cut. I tend to gravitate towards a wood with character. I love the knot look and a good light stain where you can see the grain and personality of the wood. If that isn’t something you’re into you may want to consider painting the wood vs. staining.

I was hoping to have a light wood, something that was fairly natural and muted so the records could really pop - along with the color scheme we opted to paint the office and other wood accents we would have, I felt this would be a nice and gentle compliement. We made a mistake by testing the stain on a nicer piece of trim that was extra from the square accents we created on the bottom half of the accent wall, and because of this it dried lighter than what we had anticipated for the shelves.

This was a rookie mistake but it took a minute for my dad and I to understand what happened. At one point we were convinced we left the wrong stain out. Because the wood we used for the shelves was unfinished and cheaper it was thirstier and the stain just clung to these particular cuts of wood a lot different than the trim piece we tested it on. We probably could have used some elbow grease and wiped as much off as possible but overall they ended up looking very sharp and I think both of us were so excited to get them on the wall that we didn’t mind. Finally after a day of letting the shelves dry from the stain we went into the office and measured out all of the holes, put in the anchors, and finally hung the shelves.

I started high and worked my way down. My dad was so excited once the first shelf was hung he ran and started getting his records to put on display before I even got to hanging the second. I was so happy to see my hard work result in his giddiness.

We love the final result! It’s sharp and cool, everything I had hoped the wall would be. It makes the room more interesting and gives this deep feeling that is there and comforting but can’t fully be explained - only experienced. The room still has some final touches it needs and little things that could be improved but the main work of the room is finished and the wall and these shelves speak volumes. I’m so thankful I was able to do this for both my parents and look forward to the projects I can get my hands on in the near future.

Cheers!