How to Create a Rustic Bathroom with White Floating Shelves

Time: 1 Hour

Cost: $15

Skill: Moderate

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Trust me, there is no shortage of awkward blank spaces on the walls of our home, but I am slowly finding purposeful and decorative ways to fill them.  This week I tackled one of the spaces out of functional necessity.

The Guest Bathroom.  

So a little back story about this space.  When we remodeled our entire home, and added our addition. we decided to take part of the original master bathroom for our en-suite.  We left just enough space on the other side to have a quaint guest bathroom.  I am fairly certain that it is about as small as a bathroom can be while meeting building codes and still including a full size tub, toilet, and sink. 

You can actually see the full guest bathroom reveal here.

The Problem: A Lack of Storage

Naturally, it lacks storage. 

This lack of storage is further complicated by the fact that last year I chose to build this farmhouse style vanity, which cost us your typical under sink storage. Oh the price of style!  

We do not have a lot of house guests that stay over.  As a result storage hasn’t seemed to be much of an issue, but at the very least I needed a place for towels. When I say there is no space, I mean it!  There aren’t even any good options for towel rack placement on the minimal wall space we have.

Thankfully I did find a cute wire basket to put under the vanity.  It does a nice job of holding all of our nice crisp white towels, that we never even use.  We also have our recently improved linen closet directly outside the door, where we can store cleaners and other products..

Despite not being desperate for storage, I really wanted to add some shallow shelves to give the guest bath a more decorative feel, while adding the potential for increased functionality.  The solution: some rustic white floating shelves.

Here is what our little bathroom looked like with the blank wall.  A bit blah, right?

So to resolve our lack of functionality, and our lack of decor, I decided to take my wooden floating shelves tutorial, tweak the sizing, and create some rustic white floating shelves.

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How to Build the White Floating Shelves

As I just mentioned, I followed my Floating Shelves Tutorial and customized the dimensions to fit this space. After reading through these important notes, make sure to click over there to see the tutorial.  

In my original build I actually stopped short of adding a bottom piece to the shelf boxes.  It just wasn’t necessary for the space.  Mainly because the bottom of the shelves were barely visible, and I would have had to spend more money on sanded plywood.  So I opted to create a three sided box that just sat on top of the brackets.

However, with these white floating shelves being much smaller, and having a more visible bottom, I opted to add it.  In doing so I was able to create a fully enclosed box. 

So looking at this box, you can see how it will sit around the brackets, if that makes sense. 

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How to Secure the White Floating Shelves

There are several ways that you can create floating shelves. The method that I have repeatedly used is to create brackets, and then build a box that will fit around them. I find that this method of building brackets is the sturdiest option, and it can be completed entirely with wood, vs. having to buy a metal system to mount. So to me that is the better option.

With these white floating shelves being significantly smaller shelves than my living room wooden floating shelves, I only needed to use 1×2’s for the brackets. In fact, even if your floating shelves are bigger, you can still use 1 x 2 boards for your brackets. Regardless, you will be securing them along the top, so it does not matter if the bottom of the brackets line up with the bottom of the box.

Of course nothing in an old house can be normal, a concept that I have become very familiar with over the years.

In this guest bathroom, there was only one stud in the section of wall where I needed to attach the brackets.  I made the decision to use a 3″ screw to attach the brackets securely to the stud on one side. Then I used a good amount of nails with the nail gun to secure the other side with only drywall.  The screw created enough support that this felt sturdy. If you are concerned though you could always opt to use an anchor anywhere that may not have an available stud.  I just didn’t feel that lightweight bathroom decor warranted that!

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Design Choices for White Floating Shelves

There are so many options out there when it comes to paint, stain, texture, etc. With these white floating shelves, I made a couple of design choices that were different from my original tutorial. One of these design choices was to leave the nail holes unfilled.

This gave them somewhat of an imperfect look. I also opted not to sand the wood, leaving it with a rough wood texture. Both of these choices really gave them a more rustic feel.

Not to mention, not doing these things saved me a little time!

Instead of staining these shelves, as I did with our living room floating shelves, I painted them a glossy white. It is difficult to tell in the picture, but they have quite a bit of texture to them. The gloss finish also makes these shelves easy to clean, which in a bathroom is always a plus!

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How to Make these White Floating Shelves for Free

The boxes for these white floating shelves were made entirely with left over pieces of sanded plywood, and 1×4 boards. Then I was able to make the brackets with scrap pieces of 1×2 boards.

The paint was also left over from a project!

So just another great example of what you can do with that leftover wood sitting in your garage!

One of my best tips for repurposing scrap wood is to be flexible. Maybe you have something that is not quite the size you were thinking, but if you adjusted your measurements, it could work! So be flexible, give yourself some grace, and be creative!

If you adjust your dimensions to fit what you have on hand, you will end up with just as amazing of a product but with less cost and less waste! Its a win, win.

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And here they are…my new white floating shelves…making a world of difference in our guest bathroom!

It is a bit easier to see the nail holes and wood texture in these pictures. I could not be happier with how they came out. These white floating shelves are a nice variation from my original wood stained floating shelves, and have a completely different feel.

For anyone who is wondering, I snagged this adorable plant collection for $15.00 at Marshalls. The ceramic tile below is a sample we took from Fitzgeralds Tile in Massachusetts a couple of years ago and claimed it as decor. I hope they aren’t waiting for us to return it!

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Be sure that you hope over to my Floating Shelves Tutorial for the full guide on how to construct your own floating shelves. Hoping everyone enjoys their last few weeks of summer! I know I am more than ready for fall decor.

Thank you so much for reading, and as always, I truly appreciate your support in this community!

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