My craft room is also my office, and my husband’s office, and my kids hangout place. It is the most used room in our house and also the most cluttered and messy. It is where we shove all our disorganized stuff when we have company. Usually, it ends up with piles and piles of junk… belonging to anyone in the family. We lose things in this room and don’t find them for months! I am working for home more often and feeling the stress of the mess. So, I decided I needed to add some really unique, stylish and cheap shelving. I have seen lots of the industrial farmhouse style decorating and decided to make industrial shelving with pipes and pallets. I already have the pallets from my Farmer’s Market crafts, so I just needed to get pipes (galvanized) and some paint and stain!
We have two separate desks and one very large craft table, along with four chairs and lots of storage cabinets, file cabinets and IKEA crates! The industrial shelving with pipes and pallets are going to make sure we put papers in their place. Bills, school permission slips, sports forms, mail and don’t forget the actual work papers…. oh my. It is time to force some organization! Here is a picture of my desk area BEFORE the shelves were installed (please excuse the mess).
We are using two designs of industrial shelving with pipes and pallets. One shelf will just have a straight pipe coming out of the wall on each end. The other will have a pipe between the two pipes coming out of the wall. The cross pipe will be used to hang storage baskets from. We are duplicating the shelving design over each desk, mine and my husband’s. So, the supplies used and listed will make four shelves total.
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Supplies Used
- Galvanized Pipe 1/2 inch diameter (2 – 3 foot pieces, 8 – 12 inch pieces)
- Galvanized Elbows 1/2 inch diameter(4) and Floor Flanges (8) in the same size as the pipe
- Copper 2 hole tube straps 1/2 inch diameter
- Pallet Boards – 4 foot long x 5 1/2 inch wide – 8 total pieces
- Minwax PolyShades Stain & Polyurethane in 1 Step – Espresso Gloss
- Rust-oleum Metallic Spray Paint – Oil Rubbed Bronze
The Process
I am not much for the galvanized steel color, so we opted to spray paint the pipes an oil rubbed bronze color. It coordinates well with the colors in the craft room/office already. The pallet boards are very rough, so they need a good sanding, followed by staining with some espresso colored stain. Total time for this process was about 2 hours. I didn’t want this to be a huge project, so I found the the easiest products I could to make this quick. The stain I used was both a stain and polyurethane in one, eliminating one step, and quite a bit of time.
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My husband really wanted to put both sides of the shelves into studs in the wall, but the width of our shelves would not allow it, so one side is anchored. Both sides are very solid, so I could probably climb up and take a nap on the shelves if I wanted, but they are a little short for me, so I guess I’ll stick with the couch. Then, put the pipes together like a puzzle…. actually much easier than a puzzle! Put the boards on top of the pipes and use the copper tube straps to screw the boards down and you are done!
The Finished Product
A little bit of flair we used in this project is copper tube straps to attach the wood onto the pipe. I LOVE the look of the copper!
The shelves are beautiful, rustic and strong!