Kim asked me to build a shelf for Catherine's room. I'm not sure exactly why we need this, but mine is not to question why. It is a lot longer than any shelf you could buy from a catalog. She wanted it to look like one she found on the Pottery Barn web site, but of course it had to be to her specified custom dimensions. And she wanted it to be painted white.
I hadn't worked with MDF before and it seemed like a good application for it. It routes and paints well.
I got the hooks fron Van Dyke's Restoring. They have little hearts on them.
I wanted to avoid any visible fasteners in mounting it on the wall. After some research on the web I settled on an approach where I drive lag bolts into studs, leave about 3 inches sticking out, cut off the heads of the bolts, and drill corresponding holes in the wall side of the shelf. The shelf slides onto the bolts. It is a pretty solid mount with just the bolts fitting tightly into the mounting holes, but I added a line of silicone sealer on the lower backside of the shelf. If I need to remove it I'll be able to slice through with some wire.
