Jonas now has an awesome shelf in his room to hold some of his cool space stuff. We’re so excited to finally have it up! One step closer to a room tour.
Having this cool display really brightens up Jonas’s room and we’re glad to not have everything crammed onto his one bookshelf anymore.
The wood for the shelf was attached to the back of our industrial butcher block. The butcher block used to be our craft/work table, but now it’s livin’ as our kitchen island. Having a raised shelf on an island in the center of our kitchen looked weird, so we removed it. The wood shelf has been unused in Jonas’s closet for months. But thankfully we recently found six of the metal brackets for 4 dollars at an estate sale (never forget to look in basements and garages!) and a shelf DIY was born.
Jake used a stud finder so that the heavy shelf would be supported in wood beams. He marked the wall, measured the wood to make sure that the four brackets were centered, drilled pilot holes into the wood and the wall, used the level a lot, attached the brackets to the wall, and then attached the brackets to the wood. I helped, but only to hold things. When I try to measure, things come out all wonky.
He’ll be happy to answer any hanging questions you have in the comments section.
We really like the combo of metal and natural wood around here.
Now this is the view you get as soon as you walk into Jonas’s room! Much cooler than a blank wall. But what’s even more awesome than the shelf is the collection of space stuff on it. Here’s the run down of the items on his shelf:
This little moon globe is part of our larger globe collection. We love moon globes and because they’re hard to find, we scoop them up whenever we find ones that won’t break the bank. We found this one in a local antique store. The names of the features on the moons are really fun to read. They’re named after famous scientists, writers, and philosophers.
You can’t have a nerdy space room without a little star wars. We have this Mos Eisley Cantina Pop-up Book 
This book was my little brother’s. I love having stuff from my childhood in our kids’ rooms!
On the shelf, the pop-up cantina scene is displayed. So there’s a wookie and a bounty hunter missing a head. He’s firing a gun, so we’ll just pretend a bounty hunter blew it off with a laser.
I bought this Vintage Space Probe game from my great-grandpa’s estate sale. The game is difficult, but super fun. You have to lay it flat and try to roll a heavy metal ball by moving the metal sticks. The goal is to drop the metal ball into one of the planet spots furthest from the moon. I always end up in Mercury, but Jake can make it to Saturn. I loved playing with it when I was little, but I’ve always been really bad at it.
We also put a vintage book called “The Big Dipper” (a thrift store find) under the toy for another pop of blue.
This frame houses tons of space paper memorabilia that I’ve been hoarding since I found out I was pregnant with Jonas. Papers were purchased from Etsy shops Iowa Jewel’s Treasure, the Candy Shoppe, The Black Sheep Yarns, and Vintage Buttercup. The frame is huge and cheap from Target. I like that the clear part is plastic and not glass, so I’m not as worried about it falling. And it’s much lighter.
The best part: the vintage Fisher Price light-up globe. Not only is it super awesome just as a globe and a nightlight, but it also has a little magnifying glass attached to it that you can move over to those white dots to see facts about different areas of the world.
Here it is at night.
This shelf is Jonas approved. He’s mad I won’t get down the globe (he keeps reaching for it), but he’s done nothing but point and say “pri-eee pri-ee pri-ee” since it’s been up. (That’s “pretty” for those of you that don’t speak baby.)
He also seems glad to have something to look up at when he’s getting his diaper changed.
Our lens can’t get far enough back to take a picture of a whole wall, so here are some instagrams so you can see how the shelf looks with the rest of J’s furniture.
It cheers up the beige walls, that’s for sure. We can’t wait to finish up Jonas’s room and to find something cool to do with the other pieces we took off the butcher’s block (there were two metal pieces holding up the shelf).
Have you ever repurposed something like this?
