Here is my first blog post! This is a project that I originally found on The Brick House that I fell in love with. I needed a lot of shelving for storage but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. The plumbing pipe shelving unit was extremely affordable and allowed me to customize it exactly how I wanted. This project was a little over $100 and it covers the entire wall.
I started by deciding where I wanted my desk area to be and placed tape on the wall to decide the height of the shelves and my desk. I measured everything to where I thought it should be and didn’t pay any attention to the lengths that you can buy directly from the store. Luckily, I had a very nice man who cut the pipe and threaded it for me at Lowe’s for free. If I did this again, I would try to find a way to incorporate standard sizes to avoid some of the hassle. I also had to figure out what pieces to buy to connect the plumbing pipe. In the picture below, I circled the areas and described what pieces were used in my shelving unit. Before assembling, I painted the 3/4 inch. galvanized pipe with flat black paint.
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| Labeled pieces & how many used on my shelving unit |
Next, I measured how long each shelf should be and had those pieces cut. I finished the sides of the wood and gave the shelves two coats of stain. Once I had two coats of stain, I sanded and added a coat of polyurethane.
Matching the desk area lengths to the opposite shelving lengths was tricky. I had to go back to Lowe’s to have an additional piece of pipe cut because the sides were not matching as I had initially planned. This project would be very simple if it consisted of shelving units straight across instead of the desk. However, if you want the desk area you can definitely make it work.
Then I assembled the shelving unit and connected the shelving unit to the wall at the top of the shelving unit with the floor flanges. I did not connect anything at the bottom of the shelving unit because it was very sturdy without and I didn’t want anything too permanent. Now I am just struggling to find the items to decorate the shelves with to achieve the look that I want! Feel free to comment or email me if you have any questions on how I completed this project. Thanks!