The Shift Shelf

As with most of my home projects, it began with a request from my wife. She is a plant-lover and has transformed much of our home into a jungle. Along with that comes the challenge of finding enough space for all of the pots, big and small. My wife asked for a shelf that we could put on the wall in our bedroom for small plants. I did a quick internet search and found images of what the internet calls a 'Shift Shelf'. Basically, it is a frame that has a few boards inserted into it, shifted from one side to the other. The design was simple enough that I didn't need to download any plans for it. I guess that comes from having a little bit of experience. I showed it to my wife, she loved the design and asked for 2 of them!

Google search results for a 'wall plant shelf'.

I sat down and drew up the plans. I looked at the wood I had available in my stockpile of scrap wood, and found that I didn't have all the boards I would need. I discussed it with the boss and we agreed that expensive wood like maple or oak wouldn't be needed, particularly for something that is more decorative than functional. We would buy rather inexpensive wood and stain it any colour we needed. We chose poplar and I bought some wood at the hardware store. I bought double the wood needed, so that I could cut and build 2 shelves simultaneously.

In my plan, the vertical frame would be a simple box, with the wood being 1/2 the width of the horizontal boards. This simplified the build and the shopping process, because I could buy all the same wood, and just cut it to length.

a simple box joint

The vertical frame is basically an open box, so I used a box joint for the corners. They are strong joints and look nice on a simple structure like this shelf. The vertical boards were approx. 2 1/4" wide, so the box joint would have only a few fingers. Cutting box joints can be done with a jig, (which is what I did for the decorative wooden box) but I found a video that discussed doing a simple box joint without a jig. It wasn't complicated but I appreciated the explanation and it was what I used to create my joints.

All cut and ready to go. Note the tape job. Adding the tape before cutting the wood helps reduce tear-out during cutting 

So after buying the wood, I cut it all to length. I wanted all the boards to have nice, sharp edges, so I taped the areas before cutting. It was a bit more work, but for this wood project, I feel it helped to reduce tear-out. 

To hold the horizontal shelf boards, I decided on dados. This would be allow the weight of the shelf to be supported by the dado channel, rather than just glue or an ugly screw. I cut a dado channel with my miter saw and tested the fit of the board when inserted, to ensure the fit was snug. Once I was satisfied, I cut 12 dados in my vertical frame boards, evenly spaced from one another. I wanted the dados for the front and back to be perfectly aligned, so I taped them together while cutting them on the miter saw, as shown below.

 

two boards taped together to cut a dado channel in both at the same time, perfectly aligned.

Test fitting the shelf board in a dado channel

The dado channel is ready to receive the shelf board

After that, I tried the box joint procedure on some scrap, to ensure that the joint would be a tight fit. There's nothing worse than a loose box joint that needs a ton of correcting to hold everything in place. The video I referenced earlier showed how to do the box joint without a jig, and even without truly measuring. Basically, I cut a channel in the end of the board, and then mark that space on the other corresponding board to line them up and cut. I wanted to have my cuts a bit more ordered, and to not require cutting and marking each one individually (I would be making 16 cuts in total, so having a little bit of setup would help in being consistent).

What I did to help my work was to add stop-blocks to my cross-cut sled on the table saw. This would give me a consistent reference point for each side while moving my board left and right for the cuts.

In this photo, you can see the vertical shelf board standing up, over the blade. It has space on one side, so that I could progressively cut the channel until the board hit the stop block. This made a consistent cut space for the the box joint. A similar setup was used for the corresponding piece. 

Here are the resulting pieces that will fit together for the box joint. The smaller piece will either be a top or bottom support, and the longer board will be the front or back vertical frame that will also hold the shelf boards with the dado channels.

After the box joints were cut, I assembled the shelf and did a dry fit. This showed me whether there were any pieces that didn't fit together well. I wouldn't be able to re-cut or sand any pieces if there was already glue on them, so the dry fit gives me the opportunity to make corrections before gluing.

Putting the pieces in place for the dry fit.

The next step was to add glue to the box joints and the dados all at once. I couldn't slide the shelf boards into the frame after gluing, because it would scrape off the glue and make a mess. So I inserted all the parts at once. This required a lot of clamps, and also the use of my new pin nailer. It allowed me to add a fine pin nail to the box joints that held the boards in place which gave me the ability to remove my clamps and use them on the other shelf assembly. (I probably need more clamps). The advantage of a pin nailer is that the nails are very thin, and can sit just below the surface of the wood. It makes them almost invisible, particularly after the stain and top coat are added. 

Gluing the joints, before nailing them. 

Once the glue dried, I sanded the entire shelf down with 120 grit sandpaper. I was not only trying to get a nice surface, but also to remove any glue residue from the assembly process, which is quite messy with this many parts being integrated at the same time. My hands had glue on them and finger smudges of glue are a natural side-effect. Those invisible smudges of glue seal the wood and prevent stain from penetrating. For that reason, I needed to sand the whole shelf, removing small spots of glue residue.

The next step was to start the finishing process, which my wife assisted with. We each worked on a shelf of our own. This started with applying a wood conditioner. It helps open the pores of the wood, so more stain can penetrate and colour the wood. After the wood conditioner is applied, the wood was sanded again - because the liquid actually 'raised the grain'. It made the surface bumpy to the touch. Sanding it was the only way to make the surfaces smooth again. 

The conditioner cannot sit too long, or the wood pores will not stay open as well as intended. So, 30 minutes after applying conditioner and sanding the wood, the stain was applied. My wife had chosen red stain that she thought would look nice in our living room, considering the colour of other woods in that room, including a side table and our fireplace mantle. The chosen stain was Saman - cognac.

We tested this colour of stain on a scrap piece of poplar, and were happy with the results. While poplar has a natural green tint to the wood, it ages to a nice brown colour with exposure to sunlight. This red stain would still look nice after the underlying wood transitioned from green to brown.

After the stain was allowed to dry fully, we applied the first coat of sealant, a satin finish varathane product. This job was more difficult. Areas that receive the first coat of the top-coat suck it up quickly and appear dry after just a few minutes, with virtually no change in appearance. It makes it difficult to tell which areas had been coated and which hadn't. The top-coat needed to dry and then receive a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper. This gives the finish a white, dusty coating, but it is gives a dramatic change to the touch and quality of the next coat. This image below shows how rough the first coat can be without sanding. The bumpy surface is quite apparent. The following image shows a smoothed area after sanding.

Rough surface after receiving a single coat of top-coat. Following the instructions, I sanded between coats.

The smooth finish achieved with just a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper

After the second clear coat was applied, they sit and dry fully overnight. 

The great thing about the design of these shelves is that they were built without knowing how they would look on the wall. We were able to hold them up and see if they would look best with the 2 boards on the left, or on the right. All that was needed was for the entire unit to be flipped around 180°. It could either be spun around the frame like a globe to have the shelves point another way, or rotated clockwise to do the same. Either way, they could be aligned any way we decided was suitable once I held them up to the wall. Screw holes were added to the back of the frame, but even with that, I would be able to rotate the shelf clockwise to change the orientation and re-install into the same screw holes in the wall at a later date if desired!

On the topic of screw holes, we tested the shelves in the various rooms they would be installed into, and decided on their orientation. Once that was done, I knew which side of the shelf would be pressed against the wall. I marked the spots, added a backer board and carefully drilled the holes for the screws. I then used a bendy attachment (called a flex shaft bit holder) for my drill that allowed me to countersink my holes so the mounting screw would sit flush with the surface of the wood.

Clamping a board to the other side when drilling through a finished piece helps eliminate tear-out on the back side where the drill bit punches through.

This bendy attachment helped me get my countersink bit between the frame of the shelf. Obviously this photo is showing the bit pressed against the table only, for demo purposes.

The next step was to mount the shelves on the wall. I used 3" screws and mounted the shelves to the wall studs. I also used a level to ensure that the shelves were perfectly vertical. After they were mounted, I covered the screws with small screw covers that obscure the screw with a slight decorative element. 

The entire process took just 5 days, from buying and cutting the wood on Saturday, assembling the shelves on Sunday, staining on Monday, top coat Tuesday and final installation on Wednesday. The wood for both shelves totaled $100 CAD, plus the stain which was another $30. I already had the glue, conditioner and top coat. 

The result are 2 very nice, sturdy shelves that, while shallow, provide a fair amount of decorative shelving space for small pictures and plants. These shelves, with dinner at a restaurant made a nice birthday gift for my plant-obsessed wife.

One finished shelf in the bedroom, on the wall above the bed.

The second shelf on the wall in the living room, near the couch