Corbel Shelves
Ballard Designs. Heard of them? Well they are kind of a big deal…..and so are their prices. They had some amazing bracket shelves that were perfect for the dinning room in our townhouse. Only problem is they were like super expensive. So I started to look at etsy, Target, and a few other places that might have some similar. I found some but they were all floating shelves. I really liked the brackets or corbels on the bottom. I know its dumb that I wanted to buy them when I could of just made them right? Well sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the projects on the to do list. Thats when I just want to go out and buy it so I can check something off and be done. But checking off this project meant big bucks so I was forced to make them…..sort of ;) .
Well I didn't have a miter saw to build the shelves from scratch. So I had to get creative. I was at Home Depot and found some floating shelves that I really liked (image below is from the Home Depot website of the shelf I picked). I still thought they needed the corbels to finish them off. Thats when it hit me! I would just buy the floating shelves and add some corbels to them. DUH! I still had to do a little work but it would be quick and easy.
I chose a 24 inch shelf and a 36 inch shelf in white. I then headed over to the wooden corbels. There is a section of a bunch of unfinished corbels in Home Depot. I couldn't fin one that I like so I went to Lowes. I found the one I liked at Lowes in the picture below (picture of corbel is from Lowes website). I needed four of them (two for each shelf). They also have them online and thats where I borrowed this picture from. I also picked up some wood fill and wood glue (pictures from the Home Depot website).
As you can see in the corbel picture they had holes where you would normally attach something. I wasn't going to use these holes to attach the corbels so I used the wood fill to fill them. After the filler had dried I sanded the areas smooth. Now comes the fun part. I flipped my floating shelves main surface down and got my wood glue. I placed the wood glue on the top of the corbel and laid it on bottom side of the shelf. I just kind of eyeballed how far apart I wanted them. I did this on each floating shelf. I left them with the corbels in place where I wanted them to dry over night. The next morning I came downstairs to my “want to be” Ballard Designs shelves. Only problem was my shelves were white and my corbels were unfinished wood.
I thought about taping off just the corbels and painting them since my shelves were already white. Then I would have to worry about the whites matching. So thats right, I painted the already perfectly painted white shelves. It was the only way to make sure it all was the same color. I used my trusty Kilz primer first. Then I took my Krylon glossy white and spray painted the shelves. They turned out just like I wanted. It was less than $100 for the whole project. That is way cheaper than what I would of spent at Ballard Designs. Best part is that it was a super lazy do it yourself project that was practically already done for me. I just put it all together and slapped some spray paint on them. I know they could of been made for a lot cheaper from scratch too. I work with what I got though. Some day I will have a miter saw and then nothing will be holding me back. Watch out! But seriously I got to get one of those by the time we move into the new house. And thats a wrap….now you can go make your own “Ballard Designs” shelves.
P.S. here is a pic of my shelves that one time I tried using colors other than white to decorate for fall....