New Entry Shelf

I was decluttering the house, but I put that on hiatus for two weeks while I built several pieces of furniture to help with organizing things. This is one of the pieces I built.

The old console table in the front entry:

it doesn't look terrible from this angle

this was the angle that was bugging me

even paint wouldn't have been able to fix it

I built a console table for the entry awhile ago, then altered it a bit, but I haven't been super happy with how it was looking. I knew I wanted to sell it at our yard sale, so I first had to build a replacement. I've actually had my eye out for a replacement for some time, but haven't been able to find anything that would fit in the odd dimensions available. Hence the need to build a shelf that would fit.

I modified this plan to fit the space: I made it shorter and narrower, and added turned legs. I wanted it to look a little fancier than the 1x3 legs would allow for, and it needed to be up off the floor so the heat vent below it can function properly.

The two pieces have the same purpose, the new shelf just has a nicer look.

Below are a few pictures taken while I was building it. In the first picture you can see the longer, skinnier leg I was originally going to use (I had them already and wanted to use them rather than buy something else), but they just didn't look that good with the squatness of the shelf. On a trip to Lowe's I found the slightly shorter but significantly more robust legs that I ended up using. They really look so much better than the skinny ones.

Despite having to buy the legs, this still qualifies as a stash-buster project: if you look closely at the insides of the side panels and the backing you'll see the remains of glue (backing) and paint (side panels) leftover from other projects that I started but didn't finish because I changed my mind. Good thing paint covers up things! Since our shed is overflowing with wood of various types and sizes, using what we have is important and factored into my calculations when I figured out what I needed for this and the other pieces I built (those will be posted in future weeks).

Here the shelf is all built and ready to be caulked and painted. I'm not sure why it looks like the top is bowed, but it really isn't.

Undecorated, but sitting in it's new home. If you compare it to the console table, it's several inches wider, but about the same depth and height. I'm pleased with how it turned out!

There's now plenty of space for library books on the bottom shelf and our cd/tape player/radio and audio books on the middle shelf. I haven't quite decided what I want on top, but the current setup looks ok for now.

much better side view