Ladder Shelf Salvage

Typical shelf found at
LoweWalStapleKohlMart

After my mostly successful foray into creating my own glued wood panels for the shelves and cabinets, I decided to give them another try on my next project, a ladder shelf.  After changing our bedroom furniture out from a rustic, outdoors-like feel, to a more modern style, we were lacking a shelf and my wonderful spouse was getting a little annoyed at the stacks of books that were populating the closet.  So, it was time to get to work on fixing that.  We did some searching out of different designs and settled on a ladder-shelf style that was fairly common in many stores.  Of course, my significant other wanted to quickly go buy one so we could resolve the lack of closet space and, of course, I said, "I can make one!"  I'm sure there was some eye-rolling at that.  However, I convinced her finally when I said I was going to be using a lot of salvaged materials.

Ladder to nowhere

I've been collecting scrap pallet wood for various projects and this was the perfect project for a lot of what was taking up space underneath our deck.  Because I was making it from scratch, I was also able to customize the dimensions to fit just the right spot in the room.  I wanted to make it taller than normal to maximize the space since we have a decently high ceiling but I was unable to find any salvaged pallet wood that would work for the height so I purchased four 1"x 4" x 10' alder boards from my local Shurway.  The shelves were made completely out of pallet planks and the shelf supports were made from the leftover pieces of the alder boards.  I used a dark walnut stain to try and match the color of the new bed frame and two layers of gloss varnish.

What I really liked most about the way this turned out was the grain character of the shelves.  The pallet planks were a variety of soft woods and also various ages.  I tried to make sure the wood of each shelf was the same and it gave each shelf it's own subtle difference.  I sanded the glued panels just enough to give the shelves an even appearance and smooth out the roughest patches but I left as many imperfections as I could to make it obvious that this was reused material.
The one thing I would do over if I could would be more careful with the use of glue on the shelf sides.  Although attached by screws, I wanted the extra reinforcement since not all the boards were perfectly straight.  However, while I wiped up the excess glue that was squeezed out, it was hard to get all of it in the inside corners and seems.  Excess glue spots on the basement cabinets and shelves project wasn't such a big deal because the wood was light and since I used a natural stain, they would be difficult to spot.  With this project, the glue spots show up a lot more clearly because of the contrast with the dark stain.  Thankfully, the glue issue is minor and doesn't stand out glaringly.  Besides, all those books that were previously hanging out on the closet floor are now where they ought to be, on a shelf.