On a recent episode of Top Design, the new interior decorating reality show by Bravo, the designers were given a yard sale challenge. They each had a room to decorate and a client with specific tastes to please, but they could only purchase materials on a $2000 budget from yard sales.
The most innovative technique was the designer who took interesting drawers and gave them a new life as wall shelves. Here’s how you can borrow this technique to give your dorm or apartment a quick facelift and instant character.
Scout your thrift stores, Goodwill or local yard sales for chests and dressers with interesting drawers. Only look at how the front of the drawer looks apart from the rest of the chest. Look for drawers with good craftsmanship on the inside. Things that don’t matter for a “drawer” will be noticeable on “shelves,” like excessive glue coming out of the seams, crooked pieces, and cheap materials.
The drawer will be hung with its bottom against the wall, forming a two-shelf unit. The front of the drawer will face the floor and form the bottom of the lower shelf. The drawer’s back will form the top shelf. Depending on where and how high you plan on hanging your new shelves, you may still see the design off the front of the drawer when sitting or laying down.
When you have selected your drawers, give them a good cleaning. Sand any rough patches and make sure the wood is clean of oil, grease and dirt. If you do not clean them well, paint and varnishes will not work properly.
To give your drawers a new face-lift, you have a few options. You can varnish or stain them and keep the natural wood look. Or consider a colored stain. Blues and red stains show the wood grain, but give it a colorful punch. Varnishes will give the drawers a high glossy finish, but stains will be matte. Use paint for a thick color coating. Another option is to keep the drawer theme and cover the inside of the drawer with a designed paper. Wrapping paper or traditional drawer liner can give your new shelves a kitschy, fun theme.
When you have decided on and finished decorating your drawers, attach brackets to the back for hanging. Think about what you will be putting on the shelves. If they will just serve as shadowboxes for pictures frames and knick-knacks, regular brackets will be fine. But if you want to keep books or heavier objects on them, consider asking your hardware specialist about a stronger bracket that goes into the wall for more support. Also, consider how heavy the drawer is by itself.
Now, hang them and enjoy. Use two or three shallow shelves at different intervals for a neat set. Or use one large, deep drawer and add a cross-piece through the middle for an extra shelf.
