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Easy DIY Farmhouse Open Shelves​

ByKorilyn Martin

This easy DIY tutorial will show you how to make farmhouse open shelves!

Open shelves seem to be a farmhouse staple. Whether they are open kitchen shelves to display your dishes and plants or (check out my latest plant care post here), above your toilet to house your bathroom essentials, and even your dining room over your buffet to display all your special serving trays. Really, the open shelving possibilities are endless. The good news is that they are super easy to make and doesn’t require a big budget.

Dining table and open shelving behind the table. There is Pellegrino on the table, as well as succulents.

Lumber Yard For Boards

I decided that I wanted two wooden open shelves above my buffet in my dining room. It was such an easy and clever solution to hold all of my dishes and serving trays. We called up our local lumber yard (much more affordable) and ordered some 3-inch pine boards and my husband cut them to size and ran them through a planer to smooth them out. I did two coats of stain on each board and then did two coats of polycrylic to seal them. I went with a polycrylic instead of urethane because I like the matte finish of the crylic. Scroll down to see what stain and polycrylic I used! I also ordered the brackets on amazon. Which again are also linked in the shop this post section.

The lumber for the shelves.

brackets

We found it much easier to attach the shelving brackets to the wood first instead of attaching the bracket to the wall first. This way we could visually see if the self was in the perfect spot or not.

A man is hanging a wooden shelf on the metal brackets.

Mark your spots

Next, we held up our shelves to find the perfect spot and then marked them on the wall before hanging. Make sure you space your boards out accordingly. You don’t want them too close together before hanging or it can limit what you can actually put on your shelves themselves.

A level is on the shelf.

level

Be sure to level your DIY open shelves to make sure they are perfectly aligned. Nothing is worse than finishing a project and then kicking yourself afterward because you didn’t make sure it was level beforehand. Believe me – I’ve been there. This is part of the reason I’m not allowed to hang anything at our house. (My husbands rule!)

open farmhouse shelves
open shelving

no wrong way to do open shelving

Basically, there’s really no wrong way to do open shelving.  The key is to make them the same size as each other and the same size or slightly smaller than whatever they’re mirroring. If it’s above your buffet like mine, try and mirror the size of the buffet. If it’s the kitchen try and mirror the size of the cabinet it’s replacing or if it’s a large wall mirror the size of the cabinet below.

The key is finding good quality material to make the farmhouse open shelves and hardy brackets to support your shelf. Luckily below you can shop this post! This post may contain affiliate links… thanks for supporting the brands that support this blog of mine!

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farmhouse open shelves
farmhouse open shelves
farmhouse open shelves

Blogger, Decorator

Kori is the creative force behind The Farmhouse Life. She is a devoted mom of three and happily married to her college sweetheart. Kori lives in Central New Hampshire on a 25 acre pig farm. When Kori isn’t working on her latest home project, she enjoys reading, shopping on Poshmark, Indulging in skincare routines on Youtube, and watching reruns of New Girl. She is also working on becoming a certified interior designer.

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