How To Build Shelves With Architectural Salvage

I have been rearranging the dining room and my original vision was to move the hutch top from the kitchen to this wall behind the dining room table. The hutch top turned out to be a little large, but more importantly, was a little too unstable to hang on the wall. Once I had that image of the chippy hutch top filled with china, I had to try and create the look another way. I decided to put together some architectural salvage pieces to build shelves that resembled a cabinet.

I scrounged around my house and these are the pieces I came up with. Two pieces of old fence, two corbels, and what looks like a piece of a screen door. They all have similar weathering and chippy white paint.

How to Make Any Shelf or Board a Plate Rail

Displaying plates on the shelves was part of the vision, but I don’t have a way to cut a groove in my board to hold the plates.

So what do you do when you want to display plates on a shelf and you don’t have the proper tools to cut a groove in the board? You make this super easy plate rail.

Cut a piece of half round the length of your board.

Glue the half round to the board (use brads to help hold it if desired). About 1 1/4″ from the edge of the board seemed to be the best placement.

And there you go, a super easy plate rail.

Putting the Pieces Together

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted the look of a cupboard or cabinet, meaning a back and a top.

I used the old piece of screen door to create a back, and the top was a shelf using the old fence board.

I used these “L” brackets to attach the shelf to the wall. These are not going to hold a lot of weight, so you may want to use bigger brackets if you plan on adding heavier items. My plan was just to display some plates and hang tea cups.

After I put the shelf together I decided to add this board between the corbels. This was a board I painted previously and used as a riser. You can see the paint technique on my post building a top for my French champagne crate. I also added hooks to hang dried flowers.

Decorating the Architectural Salvage Shelves

I pulled together some mismatched floral china to display on the shelves. Cup hooks were added on the upper shelf to hang tea cups. The original cupboard had cup hooks on the bottom, so that’s were I came up with the idea to add some and hang dried flowers.

And what do you think of my picking basket? I am working on a post about how I made this from an ordinary bushel basket.

Update: Here is how I made the French picking basket.

I definitely recommend grabbing salvaged wood pieces when you see them. It is so easy to build shelves with architectural salvage.

PIN IT FOR LATER!

Thanks for stopping by,

Janet