Floating Along, Singing a Song

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the first DIY project of 2012!

That's right: it was time to get back to work on the bare walls of our bedroom. Seeing as how one of the joint New Year's resolutions the Husband and I embarked upon was to keep the surfaces in our bedroom tidy and free of clutter, it seemed only appropriate that we get a bit more storage space for our bedroom. And what lovelier way to accomplish that than to install a floating shelf above the bed?

Well, straightforward as this project was, there were still a few logistical concerns. The first? The crap-tacular quality of all the walls in our flat. You can see the beams and studs bulging through the paint on at least two of our bedroom walls. Not to mention the patently lazy job the previous tenants did of patching the holes they made trying to beautify the place. The second of these problems, thankfully, can be covered by our own attempts to slap some snazzy artwork on the walls. Of course...that relies on the first problem not being so much of a problem. You see, we'd assumed that since our bedroom has 2 exterior walls, those walls would be sturdier when it came to drilling holes. Wrong. It was the same hollow-sounding Fraggle hotel as the other walls.

Anyway, after a trip to our beloved B&Q, it was time to get cracking.

Where do I start? I brought my own hammer!

Since there's a small aisle on my side of our bed, putting the shelf on the same wall as the door was out of the question...unless you wanted it so high you couldn't reach it without a step-ladder. That left us with the wall over the bed since the other two walls are occupied by an unruly crowd of feculent protesters a window and a large mirror.

The Husband broke out our/his tools and got to work. The shelf was centred over the headboard and I volunteered to sit up in bed to help gauge an appropriate height at which to hang our shelf. It was a floating shelf, BTWay, because we didn't want to run the risk of cheap and tacky-looking brackets. Plus: the stuff we wanted to put on the shelf wasn't that heavy anyway, so we weren't too worried about the mounting for a floating shelf being too flimsy.

Once smaller pilot holes were drilled (smaller holes are easier to centre), the Husband enlarged the holes with a bigger drill bit and hammered in - you guessed it - the Rawl plugs. Side Note: now that I have a baby to entertain during these projects, Rawl plugs must now be referred to in a gravelly voice akin to a lion's roar every time their name is pronounced. 

With the Rawl plugs in place, it was time to hang the fitting for our shelf. A bonus was that this was the easiest mounting to fit since it could be screwed into the wall on its own and then the shelf would be positioned and secured once everything else was already in place.

The shelf was then slotted onto its fitting and loaded up with some of the items we wanted to clear off of other surfaces in the room. Alas, the pictures don't quite do it justice, but it looks fantastic now that it's done. Why didn't we get to this project sooner?

in all its de-cluttering glory

What else are you looking for? This post is over.