DIY Shelves: 13 Ways to Make Your Old Stuff Look New

These shelves are made for storage, not the garbage.

Our resident DIY expert certainly has some crafty ideas when it comes to using repurposed materials for rudimentary shelves, those from vintage dish racks. Here are a few more ways to upcycle, repurpose and reuse materials bound for the trash heap. Your Victorian book collection will thank you.

Found via Piccsy, fully fictionalized pipes.

Above, a DIY project from Barely Measured repurposing antique ladders.

Another ladder repurposed care of Poetic Home. This one takes a long view on literature.

Spotted in Apartment Therapy, Dutch designer Isabel Quiroga’s pop Storyteller series.

From The Paper Place, old library volumes given new life as a repurposed shelf.

Simply stated and stacked, old wooden crates used as shelving via AtticMag

Another great reuse for pallets, this idea from Unconsumption.

A repurposed skateboard, now a display shelf care of Home to Life.

Old drawers, fitted with a retro map or other inspired print or wallpaper especially, is a very doable DIY. The more nooks, the better. Via Olive Bites.

More industrial pipe shelving, this idea from Cool Material via Eclectic Interiors.

Salvaged suitcases-cum-picture and candle display from Quirks by Annie.

Finally, for storing your reading – or your liquor – vintage milk crates rescued from Farm Maid Dairy in Detroit by Reclaimed Industry.

Image: We Heart It

K. Emily Bond

K. Emily Bond is the Shelter Editor at EcoSalon and currently resides in southern Spain, reporting on trends in art, design, sustainable living and lifestyle.