It's been almost exactly three years that the background behind me has been more or less the
same. Well, today we are gonna change that! Over the past few months I've been acquiring
various items that I'd like to display here in my room, so I decided that I'd build a shelf and
mount it above my monitors here that I can put things on. As I began planning out the shelf I
realized that I had a problem. My desk is a sit stand desk and can be raised and lowered whenever
I want to. The problem is if I mount the shelf to the wall, because of the way my desk is set up in
my room here and with the monitor arms I'm using I would no longer be able to raise my desk because
the monitor arms would collide with the shelf whenever the desk was raised.
I was about to bag the idea entirely until the thought came to me, "Why not build a shelf
that attaches to the desk. That way when the desk moves up, the shelf moves right along with
it!" As I have a tendency to do I sketched out a totally over engineered plan for it,
figured out the materials I was going to need to build it and then set off to
work. I chose to build my shelf from this 4 foot by 8 foot piece of plywood.
I don't own a table saw or track saw so I used a technique I've used many times before for cutting
straight lines; which involves a straight edge (in my case a level) some clamps and a circular saw.
I carefully measured things out and was able to cut all the pieces I needed to build my shelf.
I cut two pieces that were 72 inches long and 12 inches wide to make up the top and bottom pieces
of the shelf. One piece that is 72 inches by 3 inches for the back edge of the shelf.
Another piece that is 73 inches by 2 inches for the front edge and two 12-1/2 inch by 3 inch
pieces for the sides. For the interior structure of the shelf I also cut two 72 inch by 1 inch
pieces, four 11 inch by 6 inch pieces and four 11 inch by 1 inch pieces. Once I had all my parts
cut I began putting things together by applying some wood glue to my 11 inch by 1 inch pieces.
These pieces are probably overkill but will be used to add a little rigidity and support in the
center of the shelf once it's all put together. I used some clamps to make sure all the edges
were flush and to keep the pieces tightly pressed together while the glue dried. The next item of
business was to glue the 11 inch by 6 inch pieces, so I squeezed out some wood glue onto them,
clamped them up nice and good and let the glue dry. These pieces will go on either end of the
shelf between the top and bottom pieces to provide blocking to screw the legs of the shelf into.
Once the glue had dried on all of these pieces it was time to build the shelf. I grabbed the
72 inch by 12 inch piece I wanted to use as the bottom of my shelf and put some wood glue on one
of the ends. I then carefully aligned one of the 12-1/2 inch by 3 inch side pieces and secured it
in place with some brad nails. I then flipped the board around and repeated this for the other side.
Up next was to apply some glue to the back edge of the shelf, put the 72 inch by 3 inch piece
into place and secure it to the other pieces using some brad nails. For the front edge of the shelf
I once again first applied some glue and then grabbed my 73 inch by 2 inch piece,
aligned it with the other pieces and then secured it using my brad nailer.
I then grabbed my two 72 inch by 1 inch strips applied, glue to the back of each of them
and set them in like so along the front and back edges of the shelf and brad nailed them
into place. These pieces are meant to create a ledge for the top panel of the shelf to sit on.
Next up I grabbed my 11 inch by 6 inch pieces I'd glued together the day before
and applied some more glue, dropped them into their positions and secured them with, you guessed
it, some more brad nails. All that's left now before we can place the top panel is to position
the 11 inch by 1 inch supports. To get them evenly spaced out I used an old trick where
you take your pieces and place them against one side like this. You then measure the distance
from your pieces to the other side of the area you'll be placing them in. In my case here it
measures out to 58-1/8th inches. You then need to divide this number by the number of spaces between
all your supports. Since I have two supports here I'm going to have three spaces. One on each side
and one between the two supports. I divided 58-1/8th, or 58.125 if you like decimals better,
by 3 which equals 19.375 or 19-3/8ths. I measured out to 19-3/8ths on each side of the shelf, set
the 11 inch by 1 inch supports in place and as you can see we have 19-3/8ths between our two supports
as well. I then of course glued and nailed them in place and now we're ready to place our top panel.
I first applied glue to all the surfaces that would be contacting the top panel, set it in
place and then secured it to the rest of the shelf assembly here using a couple dozen brad nails.
At this point I was very happy to have the shelf all put together but there was still
a lot of work left to do. I grabbed my tub of wood filler and got to work filling all the
nail holes and other voids in the plywood. Also at this point I had a few edges that
didn't quite align the way they're supposed to and needed a little trimming. For this I used
a handsaw to shave off that excess wood. I used my left hand to keep the blade sitting as flat
against the surface of the shelf as possible which helped me cut things off nice and flush. All it
needed was a little sanding after that and things were looking just the way they're supposed to.
I then resumed my work with the wood filler, let it all dry and then set to work sanding
everything down. I first hit it with some 60 grit sandpaper to knock all the rough stuff down
and then came back with some 220 grit to get things nice and smooth and ready for stain.
Ok, now on to the legs. Initially I was going to build the legs out of galvanized plumbing
pipes but while I was at the hardware store I saw some more decorative looking stuff from a company
called Steel-Tek that's actually intended for use in making stuff like shelves, desks, tables
and anything else you can think of to use them for. Each leg is composed of 9 individual parts.
There's the flange, which screws into the bottom of the shelf, a 24 inch piece of pipe, which goes
into a "T". Out of the front of the "T" I have a 12 inch piece of pipe with a plug in the end of it
and a bracket... thing... which is going to act as a foot for the leg. Out of the back of the tee
is a 3 inch piece of pipe that also has a cap in it along with another foot bracket thingy.
The thing I like about this Steel-Tek hardware is it all screws together really easily using
an Allen wrench. I did have to do some customizing of things and cut different pipes to the lengths I
needed them and the plugs, I found, do not easily fit into the end of the pipes like you think they
would. It's more apparent in person but I hope you can see it on the video here how this plug
fit into the pipe so tightly the pipe was bending and the paint on it was cracking. For the other
three plugs I had to install, I decided to use my angle grinder to trim a little bit off of
a couple of the prongs and then they fit in much more easily. The pipes on the other hand actually
fit very loosely into the fittings and would very often lean a bit one way or the other even after
tightening down the retention screw. So in an effort to snug things up I wrapped the ends of
the pipes with some black Gorilla Tape several times so the pipes would fit in nice and snug.
So far that seems to have helped things quite a bit. I then figured out where I wanted to position
the flanges on the bottom of the shelf, marked the holes and pilot drilled for the lag screws I'll be
using to attach the legs. Staining the shelf is easily the most time-consuming part of this whole
project. Well, okay... applying the stain itself doesn't take all that long but there's a lot of
waiting between coats so it makes it feel like it takes (clip from The Sandlot) "forever, forever,
forever." I first put on a coat of pre-stained wood conditioner, which is supposed to make the
stain go on more evenly and then wiped on the first coat of stain and let it dry overnight.
The next morning I stained the bottom of the shelf and then let that dry for
several hours before coming back to do a second coat. The stain I'm using is
both stain and polyurethane in one so between coats I used some steel wool to rough things up
and allow for better adhesion of additional coats as per the instructions on the can. In total I did
4 coats of stain; 2 of a lighter color and 2 of a darker color. After the stain was completely dry
I attached the legs to the shelf, brought it up to my office here and set it in place on my desk.
I of course immediately set to work getting out all my stuff I wanted to display on it
and I'm looking forward to adding some more fun stuff to the collection. Well
what do you think? Do you like the addition of the shelf? Or should I change it back to the way it
was before? The comments section is now yours. As of right now I'm thinking that I want to put some
RGB LED lights on the back edge of the shelf there or something and then a picture on that wall over
there. Thanks for checking out my video. I hope that it helped you learn a few new things or
at the very least provided you with some ideas for your own DIY shelf project. If you appreciate what
I do here on my channel there's those things that YouTube has provided for you. I think you know
what they are. But just in case you don't I'll put some hints on screen right now to help out. I
also have an Amazon store which I've linked in the video description where you can buy products I've
featured on my channel in past videos. I am an Amazon Affiliate so anything you buy from my store
Amazon does pay me a small commission on, which I use to help continue producing content here
on the channel. I hope you have a fantastic day and I look forward to seeing you again
in another video real soon. All right, we'll see you then.