Within a few minutes, I had six sets of colorful brackets (the coral color I just painted on with a brush, since it wasn’t spray paint). To avoid overspray that would get on nearby brackets, I constructed a simple shield out of cardboard that I put around each pair as I sprayed:
![install wall shelves to lath and plaster install wall shelves to lath and plaster](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/da/99/7fda99dd318ea13752ac603c99ee74a9.jpg)
I gave them all a coat of primer intended for metal items, and then moved onto painting them. I set up all the brackets in pairs like so: I knew I wanted a coral/pink in addition to what I found, so I also grabbed the leftover paint from my coral TV stand project. I let the stain sit for 15 minutes before wiping off excess, and let each side dry for four hours before flipping them over and doing the other side.įor the brackets, I decided I wanted to paint each set a different color, so I sifted through my collection of leftover spray paint and found some bright colors I liked. I originally tried a lighter color (Golden Pecan):īut like with the colorful leaning mirror I built a few weeks ago, I didn’t like the lighter look so I did an additional coat in the much darker (and aptly named) “Dark Walnut” that I already had from a previous project. I gave the corners a quick sanding to remove any roughness, then I stained the boards with a Minwax stain. First, I cut four 11″ segments from the 8’圆″ board on my table saw.
![install wall shelves to lath and plaster install wall shelves to lath and plaster](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5e/ae/f1/5eaef11a9be6f7f56598db9e9f1cd1dd.jpg)
Four of the brackets were larger, for the two bigger shelves. I also bought simple “L” bracket corner braces, two for each shelf (I was planning on six shelves, so 12 brackets total). I thought long and hard about what I wanted them to look like and changed my mind a bunch, but ultimately I decided I wanted them to be relatively simple but also colorful.įirst, I bought some simple wood boards at Home Depot - an 8′ length of 1″圆″ for most of the shelves, plus two 1″x12″x10″ oak pieces for two slightly larger shelves where I hope the cats will actually lay down. It’s hard to tell completely from these photos, but it really juts into the doorway to the hall, and makes everything feel more busy and crowded.įortunately, I had a plan. For the longest time, I’ve been dreaming of building something on the walls for the cats, like this:įrom the Plus-Nyan house, a home in Japan designed with both cats and stylish interior design in mind. That left us with this:īut the closer to “finished” that side of the room got, the more the cat tower drove me crazy. Then finally I found a replacement for the rocker at the Brimfield Antique Show, a mid-century lounge chair that I fixed up with new webbing and furniture polish last week. Then we scored The Chair and our new end tables, and brought in an old rocker we had, leaving us with this:
![install wall shelves to lath and plaster install wall shelves to lath and plaster](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PaRXakZ5lCY/maxresdefault.jpg)
The opposite side of the living room looks like this, and has pretty much been constant since we first did our living room makeover in the fall (except for the side table, which was a relatively new acquisition from an awesome vintage store in Burlington, VT):īut meanwhile, the opposite side of the room, against the picture window, has been a continuous work in progress.īut I knew that eventually I wanted to add seating over there so that the room didn’t feel so oriented around the sectional facing the TV.
![install wall shelves to lath and plaster install wall shelves to lath and plaster](http://img2.timeinc.net/toh/i/steps/mounted-shelves-OverLg.jpg)
That may be true, but my tolerance of said cat tower began to decline precipitously as we continued to work on the picture window side of the living room. In said post, I showed a photo of the tower we have for our cats, and explained that I thought it was among the more aesthetically-pleasing variations in the cat tower family: A few months ago, I wrote a post about how to decorate stylishly while also recognizing the demands and needs of your pet overlords (or faithful best friends, if you have dogs instead of cats).