So many games and so few places to shove them.  Atlantic shelves are decent enough, but they are expensive and made of particle board.  Billy bookcases are solid, but way too deep if you are just storing games, and also on the expensive side.  Is there a way to build nice, shallow wall shelving that will accommodate loose carts as well as boxed games, DVDs, and Blu Rays?  Yes.



I can't take credit for the design of the shelves I'll be showing here.  Most people who use this design credit EdT1138 with the original design, so I will credit him as well.  Thanks very much for sharing Ed, and thanks for the THX reference.

These shelves are remarkably simple.  The three vertical pieces are 2x3s and the seven horizontal pieces are 2x2s.  I can't remember the exact price, but it was around $20.  if you won't be painting, staining or finishing the wood, that is the only expense besides the hardware to mount it to your walls.  I decided to stain mine with some leftover stain from a previous project.  If you will be staining or painting, make sure you pick up some polyurethane while you are out.

Here is the area where I want to mount the shelves:


The little circles on the wall are my favorite way of finding studs.  I don't like using stud finders and the tapping with the finger method can be unreliable.  I use small and VERY powerful magnets to find the drywall screws used to secure the drywall to the studs.  The other problem this solves is wrongly assuming that your studs will be 16 inches apart.  As you can see, my studs were unevenly distributed.  The magnets tell all.

I want to maximize my wall storage space.  I want the right side of the shelf to be as close to the open closet door as possible, so I will not be attaching the rightmost vertical piece to the stud.  The same goes for the central vertical piece.  I want the one just to the left of the window frame.  The leftmost vertical piece will be the only one of the three that will attach to a stud, I will use toggle screws to secure the other two.

Here we can see the wood that I have cut to size and stained.  I've also pre-drilled holes large enough to that the toggle screw will pass through easily.  I'm also drilling a counter sink hole for the heads of the screws to that I can cover them with wood filler once the shelves are complete.


Here we can see the vertical pieces mounted and the screw head well beneath the surface. I do a quick test to measure some spacing for the shelf under the window frame.


Now that the vertical pieces are mounted, I have the exact measurements for my shelves.  I cut those to size, stain them and apply two coats of polyurethane, same as the vertical pieces. 

Here we can see the shelves stained and just waiting for the poly. 


It's important to apply poly for a few reasons.  It protects the wood AND makes for a smoother surface that will be making contact with your games.  I would hate to grab a game off a shelf and find that sliding it back and forth over the shelves have given the game splinters.  It also gives the wood a very nice "finished look".  I won't lie though, it's kind of a pain in the butt.  Especially if you use the nicer oil-based stains and poly.  You will either have to buy paint thinner to clean your brushes, or just buy 4 inch nappy rollers and toss them after each coat/application.

For shelf height, I gathered a bunch of the items that I will be storing on these shelves.  NES, Genesis, Blu Ray, Xbox One, etc.  I lined things up to see if i could get away with one universal height that would accommodate everything while not wasting any unnecessary space.  I'm happy with the spacing I ended up with.  Special Edition PS2 games are about the tallest item I plan on storing here, so I took my Final Fantasy X Collector Edition, added a couple strips of material for a buffer, and that's what I used for a height gage for every shelf except for the very top, which is reserved for loose carts.

I drilled pilot holes on the shelves so that the screw would secure to the vertical pieces instead of the shelves and so that the shelves would not split, since I am drilling into them VERY close to the end of the board.  I also drilled counter sinks for the same reason as before, to cover the screws with wood filler afterwards.

Here we see the shelves mounted:


And here the wood filler has been sanded and stained to match the rest of the shelf.  Stained wood filler doesn't match the original wood exactly, but it still looks better then exposed screws.  If you disagree, by all means, don't bother with the wood filler but I still recommend pilot holes so that you don't split your wood.


There you have it!  Finished.  This was a project that could have been easily completed in a couple hours if I didn't have to stain or poly the wood, but since I wanted them to look nice, the project took about a week from start to finish.  You really want to let each coat of stain or poly dry overnight.

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