When it came to the large wall in our home office above our new cabinets we wanted to incorporate plants as part of the focal wall.
I was really drawn to the idea of having identical plants in identical pots in neat and organized rows. While I would have LOVED to incorporate live plants, let’s just be real they would have all died slow painful deaths at different rates and it would have totally ruined the uniform look we are going for.
Luckily, IKEA has some pretty realistic and inexpensive plants that really made our vision come to life.
To display the plants, we built five super simple wall-mounted plant shelves and today we are going to show you how!
Get a FREE digital file of our hand painted Summer Bucket List print over at our print shop website: MoonRockPrints.com
FYI: This post contains a few affiliate links to products we used to make this project. Gray House Studio does receive commissions for sales from these links but at no extra cost to you. We appreciate you supporting this site. Read our privacy and disclosure policy. You can also easily shop our recommended products here.
Like our video? Subscribe and help us reach our goal of 100k subscribers.
STEPS
1. First, Brent measured the 1×6 inch board and using the miter saw cut the piece for the back of the shelves 36 inches long.
2. Next, on the miter saw he cut three smaller boards 5 1/2 inches long each.
These pieces would become the shelves so they needed to be long enough and wide enough for the pots we had to sit on.
3. Before attaching the three smaller boards to the long board, Brent measured and made straight marks 13 inches apart from the bottom with a framing square.
The bottom of each smaller board lined up with these lines he marked.
4. Brent applied wood glue to one side of one of the smaller boards and used clamps to attach it to the bottom of the long board.
6. He repeated the previous two steps to attach the additional two smaller boards to the large board where he made the marks 13 inches apart.
In total we built five shelves.
7. Once the glue dried, we painted the shelves Dovetail Gray (from Sherwin-Williams) to match the cabinets and desk in the room.
We painted them two shades darker than the walls so that they would subtly stand out from the wall without being too overpowering and taking away from the plants.
8. Next, on the top of each shelf, Brent marked and used a drill to make 3/8 inch holes in the center of each shelf, 6 inches down from the top.
9. To attached the shelves to the wall, Brent started measuring from the center of the wall and screwed five drywall screws 16 inches apart the same distance from the ceiling.
10. Finally, we hung the wall-mounted plant shelves on the wall.
11. Then we added our ceramic pots and faux plants.
I love how this wall turned out. The muted colors, the uniformity, and the greenery goes perfectly in our new home office and while it is definitely the focal wall, doesn’t overwhelm the space.
How to build a wood herringbone countertop for our office cabinets.
We are back with part two of our office cabinets project and today we are sharing how we made our herringbone countertop. After spending quite a bit of time on the base of the cabinets, we were looking for an affordable and relatively easy solution for the countertop. We wanted it to contrast the gray base but still be interesting so a wood herringbone countertop worked out perfectly.
We should mention that this wood countertop is more for decorative purposes. We wouldn’t recommend this type of countertop anywhere where food is involved or as a work surface that would get a lot of hard use but in an office it looks amazing and works great.
FYI: This post contains a few affiliate links to products we used to make this project. Gray House Studio does receive commissions for sales from these links but at no extra cost to you. We appreciate you supporting this site. Read our privacy and disclosure policy. You can also easily shop our recommended products here.
In this video I will show the steps as well as the materials and tools necessary to make a wood herringbone countertop like we did for our office cabinets.
We chose to go with a herringbone pattern for our counter top but we needed a game plan to determine all of our measurements for the pieces before we started cutting.
In order to figure out the lengths of the boards we first needed to figure out the length of the 45 degree angle and then divide that by two which gave us the length of the center of each board.
One side of each board needed to be cut at a 90 degree angle and the other side needed to be cut at a 45 degree angle.
All the boards needed to be the same length so to get the distance we just took the depth of our counter top and determined the hypotenuse (there are calculators online to do that) and then we cut all the boards the same length with the miter saw.
We determined that the center of each board should be 13 ¾ inches so I took my measuring tape and marked that measurement on the center of the board. To double check that it is the center I measured the other way and made the mark.
I used the straightedge side of the board as my 90 degree angle. The 45 degree angle needed to intersect the center point I marked so I used a framing square and turned it until it showed 45 degrees and then slid it down the board until it met my mark.
Once it was on the mark I drew a line where I would cut the board on the miter saw.
1. Once my first board was lined up for the cut on the miter saw, I used a scrap piece of wood and a clamp to make a stop so that all the following cuts would match and be exactly the same.
In between each 45 degree angle cut, I needed to cut another 90 degree angle cut so that I could turn the board and put the 90 degree angle cut against the stop to make the exact same 45 degree angle cut.
To do this I put a spacer board between my board so the actual 2×4 sat flush against the straight guard.
Then I changed the blade back to 90 degrees and I made the cut and then flipped the board around and continued making the 45 degree angle cut.
2. After all the boards were cut, I started the process of attaching them together.
I used a drill press to drill a hole in the side of each of the boards to countersink the screws.
3. I screwed pairs of boards together and then once they were all glued and screwed together I took all the “v” shapes that were created and screwed them together the same way all the way down until the counter top was completely joined together.
Normally, I would just butt the edges together and use wood glue. I would let the wood glue set up in a clamp and it would hold fine.
However, because these are cheap 2x4s I used and they had a bunch of knots in them, each of the boards might expand at different rates and it could make the seams come apart. The screws will make sure to keep all the pieces held together tight.
4. I used a T-square to mark each side indicating on all the boards where to cut them for a straight edge.
5. Once both sides of the counter top were cut to length square with the miter saw, I flipped all the boards over, lined them up, put wood glue in each of the seam and used large clamps to hold them together.
6. Then I used a nail gun to drive finishing nails through the sides of the boards going from one board to the next on each side and then through the bottom going from one board to the next across the seams.
If the boards are bowed after being screwed together, you can straighten the bow by facing the highest point of the center up and then placing the clamp on the boards and tighten it until the boards straighten.
7. I left the clamps on for a day or two while the glue dried and then used an orbital sander on the top surface of the countertop to remove any high points.
8. Once the surface was flat, we stained the countertop being careful to get the stain in all the cracks. We used our favorite stain, Rust-Oleum Ultimate Wood Stain in Kona.
9. Finally, before installing the countertop I used our table saw to cut sections of wood pine molding down to size to frame the countertop.
When the wood pine molding were cut to the correct size, I turned the boards on their sides and cut the edges straight.
10. After staining the frame, we installed the sections of the countertop on our cabinet base and glued the frame to the edge of the countertop.
11. We used painters tape to hold it in place while the glue dried.
After we installed the herringbone countertop, we secured the cabinets to the wall.
We are really happy with how our wood herringbone countertop turned out. It looks great on top of the gray cabinets. Our next DIY project will be building a desk with the same Kona stain and a gray front piece.
Our home office is coming together nicely and we can’t wait to share the final reveal.
See how we built brand new office cabinets with a herringbone countertop for our home office makeover.
If you haven’t heard, we are expecting a baby in September! We are extremely excited about the new member of Gray House Studio and to begin all the fun nursery projects that are ahead of us. Speaking of the nursery, when we found out we were expecting one of the first things that popped into our head was, where are we going to put the nursery?
After some deliberating, we decided that as of now the best location for the nursery would be our extra room that is currently my office. That means my office is jumping across the hall to the front room next to our library. I am a little sad to leave this room but I am a glass half full kind of girl and am taking advantage of this move by convincing Brent to help me to create the office I always wanted in the new space.
Brent is is going above and beyond to help me transform this space, especially since I have been a little down for the count the past few months (so many naps). I literally fell asleep in a chair in the garage while he was working. Ha.
Our first DIY project in our home office was to build office cabinets that spanned one entire wall of the room. Currently, if my office is a mess, I can just shut the door and visitors will never know it is there. But now that I will be working out of the front of our home, the office will be the first room guests see when they walk in our door and there are no doors to hide behind. I need all the help I can get to keep this new space nice and organized.
My dream was to have a wall of gray office cabinets in this space and the past month Brent has been working his butt off to make this a reality and the cabinets he built turned out AMAZING! From just a few sheets of plywood he made my organization dreams come true and he did it all for around $300.
This project was a big one and between me falling down on the photographing job (so many naps) and lots of late nights working to get the cabinets finished as fast as possible, we didn’t document as much as we intended so this isn’t as much a tutorial as a behind the scenes look at how these cabinets came together but we do have tutorials on how to build and install the drawers and how to create the herringbone countertop that you can check out.
Our office cabinets came together in eight phases:
1. Building the base/frame.
2. Building and installing the drawers
3. Building the drawer faces and the doors
4. Painting the drawer faces and doors.
5. Painting the base/frame
6. Attaching the drawer faces and installing the doors
7. Building and attaching the wood herringbone countertop
8. Attaching the hardware
1: BUILDING THE BASE OF OUR OFFICE CABINETS
^^^ For the base of our cabinets we used one sheet of 3/4″ plywood.
^^^ Brent used the table saw to cut the sheet of plywood into to four pieces. These pieces are the sides of our cabinets so he cut them to the height and depth the cabinets needed to be to fit the space.
^^^ He used a framing square to mark where the toe kick would be on the bottom front of each of the four boards.
^^^ Then using the table saw he cut this square piece out each of the the boards.
^^^ Next, Brent cut the horizontal braces that would connect the sides of our base together.
^^^ After he made all of the cuts, we had the pieces ready to start building the base.
^^^ For the top back horizontal brace, he used a nail gun to secure two boards together in an L shape to make a stronger brace to support the countertop and allow us to anchor the cabinets to the wall.
^^^ Brent used wood glue, a nail gun, and finishing nails to build the base. It came together rather quickly and after he finished one side he had to build the second side of the base. Then he added the shelves in the middle of each base. Check out a little behind the scenes video of how this part of the cabinet building process came together here.
^^^ Once both sides of the base were finished, we brought them into the room.
^^^ We attached the two pieces together with additional braces. The middle section would eventually become large drawers.
^^^ Next, Brent worked on creating the frame of the base. He use the miter saw to cut the pieces down to the correct length.
^^^ He used the table saw to cut the pieces down to the correct width.
^^^ To attach the frame to the base, he put wood glue on the back of the pieces and held them in place with painters tape while they dried.
^^^ Now that our base was built and our frame attached, we were ready to start building the drawers.
2: BUILDING & INSTALLING THE DRAWERS
We needed four doors and five drawers for our office cabinets. Brent was able to get his drawer building technique down to be as efficient and quick as possible which meant this part of the project went quickly. If you are interested in how we built and installed the drawers in our cabinets, check out our drawer building tutorial.
3: BUILDING THE DRAWER FACES AND DOORS
We used 1×2 select pine for our doors and drawer faces. To attach the rails and stiles together Brent used pocket hole screws. For the recessed piece in the center we used 1/2″ plywood that was glued to the backside of the frame.
4: PAINTING THE DRAWER FACES AND
DOORS
When it came time to paint the doors and drawer faces we went to my trusted paint guru, my dad, to help us pick out the right type of paint for our office cabinets. We used the ProClassic® interior waterbased paint from Sherwin-Williams.
I wanted the cabinets to be just slightly darker than the walls so we chose to go with Dovetail SW 7018 because it is on the same color swatch as our walls, Mindful Gray, just two shades darker and Dovetail is already on the walls in my current office so we knew we liked the color.
My dad has a spray gun and was kind enough to spray a few coats of paint on all of our of our doors and drawer faces for us. He even delivered them to our house when he was done. Thanks Dad! They turned out great!
5: PAINTING THE BASE
Next we took the same paint used on the doors and drawers and painted the base and frame of our cabinets. We put on one light coat on, let it dry, sanded it down, and then put a second coat on. We were just intending to paint the frame of the cabinets but then ended up painting the entire thing including the inside. I am glad we did because it makes it feel complete.
6: ATTACHING THE DRAWER FACES & INSTALLING THE DOORS
To attach the drawer faces to our drawers we used double sided tape to hold the piece to the drawer while we secured it with screws through the drawer from the back. We started with the three middle drawers then worked our way outwards.
We ran into a slight hiccup with our doors and the hinges we had purchased. They were too big and because our doors are so close together, when they would open they would rub against the drawers. We ended up using the smaller hinges from our IKEA bookshelf doors and they worked like a charm!
After all the doors and drawers faces were on, our base was finished!
7: BUILD WOOD HERRINGBONE COUNTERTOP
Then it was time to focus on the countertop for the cabinets. We kicked around several different ideas before deciding that since the countertop was more for decor purpose and wouldn’t get a lot of heavy use, it was a great time to try a herringbone pattern that we have been wanting to make. We plan on making the top of our coffee table in our library also with a herringbone pattern so it should all tie in nicely together.
I have to say, I am pretty impressed with how Brent made this herringbone countertop. I love the pattern and of course that is is stained in our favorite Kona colored stain. You can check out the full tutorial on making a DIY herringbone countertop here.
8: ATTACH HARDWARE
Finally, we added the hardware. I had my eye on these drawer pulls from Rejuvenation but at $55 a piece, we couldn’t afford them especially since we needed to buy nine of them so we took to Amazon and after lots of searching, wouldn’t you know we found some that were pretty dang similar for only $9.48 a piece. That was a happy day indeed.
After the cabinets were finished, it took me about two days to move everything from my old office into my new cabinets and it felt so nice to purge things that were not needed and give the things I do need a place of their own to go back to. I have said it time and time again but I truly believe the key to organization is having specific places to put items back after use. Everything fit perfectly in the new cabinets and I even had a little extra space.
We are really happy with how our office cabinets turned out and are excited to continue working on our home office makeover. Our next project is build a brand new desk that will better fit in this space. I can’t wait!
When you live somewhere for several years your home becomes the setting of many stories and memories. If you are like us, sometimes a house even gets a few stories of its own. There are many running jokes between Courtney and I referring to peculiar things about our home.
First there is Walter the friendly ghost who receives AARP magazines and is always leaving the garage door open and the toilet seat up. Then there was Henry, the friendly red bird that peacefully eats bird food outside while telepathically communicating with our cat Jake. And, we must not forget the monster that lives in our laundry room that eats socks. It is still up in the air if the sock monster prefers clean or dirty socks.
We are well aware that each of the previously mentioned stories are mostly fictional but one thing we are sure of is that inevitably the hamsters that turn the big wheel in the air-conditioner always go on strike when the weather turns hot.
Last year, the first week the weather got above 90 degrees we caved and called the repair man when the inside of our house finally reach 85 degrees. After spending a small fortune to replace all the A/C components in the attic, we slept easy all summer in our cool house. But, wouldn’t you know the first weekend it heated up this year the temperature slowly climbed in our house but our A/C would not kick on.
Determined to not spend a fortune again this year, I set out to figure out how to fix it myself. (spoiler alert) After a late night we were able to fix the A/C problem ourselves because luckily it was due to the thermostat and not the air conditioner itself. Below is how we tested our thermostat and compressor to determine which one was causing the air conditioning system to fail.
How to Replace a Thermostat Video
In the video below I will show how to test to see if it is in fact the thermostat that is not working and then the steps to replacing a thermostat.
To see a new DIY tutorial video every Thursday, subscribe to our channel ⇾
We chose to replace our thermostat with a Honeywell WiFi thermostat because this will allow us to control the thermostat from anywhere and eventually incorporate it into a smart home system. Plus, this is the least expensive smart thermostat costing only $87.99.
1. Test the Thermostat
The first thing we did was change the batteries to double check that the batteries weren’t the issue. After changing the batteries we turned the temperature down to see if the compressor would turn on but nothing happened.
Once we tried the cool mode, we flipped the switch on the thermostat to heat and turned the temperature up. Once on heat mode, the heat kicked on. Because the thermostat was able to turn on the heat, we couldn’t be confident that the thermostat was broken. There was a chance that something was wrong with the compressor.
The next step was to check if the A/C could be hardwired on, bypassing the thermostat. If hard-wiring the A/C on worked we would know the thermostat needs to be replaced.
2. Test the Compressor
Once the thermostat is removed from the wall there should be several colored wires exposed.
Red Wire: Power (24 volt)
White Wire: Heater
Yellow Wire: Compressor
Green Wire: Fan
By using a wire to connect the red wire to the yellow wire the compressor should turn on. If the compressor does not turn on than the problem is the compressor not the thermostat. In our case the compressor did turn on, indicating that the thermostat was not working.
(The red wire should only be 24 volts but it can still create a small shock)
3. Turn Off Breaker
Although the 24 volt power line doesn’t pose any huge safety concerns, it is good practice to always turn the breaker off before disconnecting any wires. The two breakers to turn off are labeled A/C and furnace in our house.
4. Check the Wires
After installing the new thermostat back plate we realized the new Honeywell WiFi thermostat needs a 5th wire, the “C” wire. In hindsight this is a good thing to check when purchasing a new thermostat although it is getting harder to find thermostats that don’t need a “C” wire.
Luckily, we were able to locate the 5th wire. It was snipped off because it was not needed for the old thermostat. We were able to pull the the wire out from inside the wall and strip the wire making it usable.
5. Hook Up the Thermostat
Each color wire connects to the screw terminal with the matching initial.
Green Wire to G
White wire to W
Red Wire to R
Yellow Wire to Y
With all the wires connected, we popped on the front of the thermostat and turned the breakers back on. The nice thing about replacing the thermostat with a “C” wire thermostat is there are no batteries required.
We have our fingers crossed that this is the extent of our Spring air conditioner problems. At least next year the troubleshooting will be easier because there is only one component left in our air conditioning system that has not been replaced.
