New Shelves on the Block

I wanted to give you a little sneak peak at a project my husband and I finished today at the new house! Remember @here when I shared our plans for floating shelves in the living room...

Well, we didn't quite end up with actual floating shelves, but I could not be more pleased with what we were able to build...thanks to a little help from our awesome new tools and the coolest finishing products...

Styling is obviously so necessary, but let's not forget, we're still pretty much in the middle of a construction zone people! We've got about 2 weeks left to go...keep you fingers crossed for us please!

Now on to the details. We started off with ten 8'x12"x1" boards and cut them down to size with our Ryobi circular saw...

Heavy duty tools sort of scare me a bit, but I've got nothing but great things to say about this Ryobi saw. It's super easy to get the hang of using and incredibly accurate. I see many projects coming to life in our very near future thanks to our new Ryobi! 

After we cut down all of the boards to size, we sanded the edges and lightly stained them with Rust-oleum's driftwood stain. I actually sort of wiped it off with a rag as I was working with it to make the outcome of the stain even fainter.

The wood grain is super pretty up close...

And about those brackets...they are actually only $2 from Ikea @here! I spray painted them a metallic gold then rubbed them with the same wood stain I used on the shelves and again wiped it off. The overall look is quite aged and works so well with the driftwood stained shelves. Perfectly imperfect...

Installation was a breeze with some careful measuring and of course our Ryobi Lithium Ion Drill. 

We've got so much planned for this room I can hardly stand it...here's a preview of what is to come...