Free Friday Floating Toy Shelves

 This is what the living room typically looks like. (though we were trying to weed out the 1980's Little People this day) The little things can be tossed into the boxes and bins but what about those awkward buildings etc.? They stayed on the floor. 

I've had it in the back of my mind to add shelves to this area of Lucca's room but I didn't know how and it wasn't a priority:

(note MORE big awkward toys)

Our salvage store has a free day on the first Friday of the month for random things they haven't been able to sell. Needless to say I am a frequent attendee. When my mom is in town with the van? Lets just say it is not wise to let us go by ourselves. 

 Last month they had a huge stack of these doors. My mom said "oh, these doors make nice shelves. Too bad your dad made me get rid of mine." Wait, shelves? I could use shelves. So I selected a set which wasn't too scratched up while she went on about how if she still had hers she could have given them to me blah, blah blah. Reminder these were free so I'm not sure why she felt bad about getting rid of her set of door shelves! 

I took off the hardware and they were an inch too long so I cut them down. I was originally planning on carefully filling the holes and painting the shelves but decided to let go of my OCD ways and just hang them up. I also originally was going to use the adjustable metal brackets but there is a little bit of trim on the corner of the closet door so they were then a 1/4 of an inch too wide. 

There is that closet door trim which ruined my plan! 

I had an hour before I had to get to work so what was I going to do to get this done!? For some odd reason I had these short pieces which brackets fit into and viola! they fit behind the trim and seem to give the boards enough support. 

The finish color even somehow freakishly matches my woodwork color so it's a good thing I didn't paint them. I thought I wanted them to be adjustable but I like the clean floating look better so it all worked out perfectly. Her toys are lightweight so they don't need much support in the middle and if she decides to swing from it, or something weird, the shelf probably will fall but she will be showered with toys and a 3 pound shelf instead of something solid wood or particle board. We shall see! It keeps a few awkward things off the floor/at least I have an easy place to stuff them when I need to vacuum.