Make This Simple DIY Picture Ledge For Super Cheap & In One Hour!

Is it wrong to sprinkle adorable photos of your kids or gorgeous printables all around your house? If it is I don’t want to be right!

Family photos & beautiful prints really make a home feel cozy, the trick is to display them without it looking cluttered.

I really was a huge fan of the eclectic gallery walls with huge letters & all different frames, but since having Eli I find myself leaning more towards simple.

For his newborn photos, I created this beautiful modern gallery wall filled with black & white photos. It is clean, modern & best of all I used my favorite picture hanging hack so no measuring was involved!

The living room needed a little picture love too so I decided to make two DIY picture ledges. This has to be my fastest DIY to date y’all! I was able to whip up two long floating picture shelves in 1 hour!

Let me show you how

Picture Shelf Supplies:

• 1×4 Select Pine Board
• 1×3 Select Pine Board
• 1×2 Select Pine Board
• Stain
• Pre-Stain (optional)
• 2″ Screws
• Wood Glue
• Small Finishing Nails (optional)

DIY Picture Ledge Tutorial:

For my shelves I wanted one longer one (6′) & one shorter (4′)

1. First, pick out nice straight pieces of wood, I used select pine & really looked them over for imperfections. It takes 3 boards per shelf so for my two shelves I bought six boards.

2. Next, I measured my boards & made sure each set was the same length. I only had to cut a 1/4″ off of two of the boards to make them match.

3. Now that the boards are cut it’s time to apply the pre-stain to the wood. I don’t always use pre-stain when I am staining but this picture ledge is going to be a focal point for the room so I want it to be right!

If you follow us on Instagram you saw what a huge difference pre-staining made!

4. After applying a layer of pre-stain you can immediately apply the regular stain. I went with Minwax Golden Pecan, after using it on our DIY outdoor table I have become a fan!

Depending on the look you want you can apply the stain accordingly, I applied my stain heavy & really let it soak into the wood.

This is after one coat, I ended up applying one more to the wall ledge shelf color really rich looking!

After the stain dries you can start assembling! One shelf took me a total of 10 minutes to assemble, I told y’all fastest DIY ever!

5. Start with attaching the 1×3 middle piece to the 1×4 back piece. Use wood glue & clamps to hold the two pieces together.

6. From the back of the 1×4 piece, secure the two pieces together using 2″ wood screws.

These Power Pro wood screws are my absolute favorite! You don’t have to pre-drill the holes & the no-strip star head makes them amazing to work with.

7. Now that the middle & back pieces are attached it’s time to attach the 1×2 to the front. Use a layer of wood glue & clamp them together.

7. The wood glue is probably enough to hold the front & middle piece together because there won’t be any weight on that piece, but I have a toddler so I also nailed in small finishing nails along the front.

8. If you do use nails, Minwax makes a stainable wood filler. Apply it to the holes & then do a little touch-up stain along the front.

9. This part took me the most time… hanging the frames. As a general rule any picture frame shelf or artwork should be hung at eye level. My first DIY picture ledge is 50″ from the ground & the smaller picture shelf in 17″ from the long one.

I attached the picture wall shelf with a few 2″ screws, making sure to hit studs. Don’t worry about the screws because the picture frames will hide those.

How To Decorate Floating Shelves

Not bad for a 1 hour DIY picture ledge project!

After I have our most recent family photos up for a while maybe I’ll change out the photos to all black & white photos! What do y’all think, are you a fan of color photos or black & white?

Here are the frames I used!

There are so many options for decorating & arranging a photo ledge shelf.

I love using a combination of different frames to give the picture ledge some depth & dimension.

You could use frames that are all the same size or throw in some smaller & larger ones.

Let me know what y’all think & if you like this style gallery wall or our modern & clean style one better!