DIY Lego Advent Calendar Tree Shelf

 I should really put more stuff on this blog.
What can I say?
I'm lazy.

Regardless, it is December 1st, and my kids got some new Advent calendars from their Oma.
Lego Advent calendars, to be exact.

At 3 and 5, my kids are just too big for Duplo, and still messy enough that Legos are NEVER picked up. My 3 year actually dumps buckets of them out and walks across them for fun. I have witnesses. It's nuts.

In my search for a neat way to organize/display their legos, I found some cool floating shelves that people just glue base plates onto. Sounds great, right?!?!

Off to Amazon I go . . .

I ended up ordering some 16 (dot) by 32 (dot) baseplates for super cheap, thinking that I was going to just take some 2 x 4's, cut them in half (or have my handy husband cut them in half, since the table saw terrifies me), paint them, glue on baseplate pieces, and hang them on our walls (somewhere). I always get these neat ideas for storage for the kids, and then it ends up not fitting on our walls. The hazards of a small   a tiny  an energy efficient house.

Well, anyway, it's December 1st, and the Advent season is upon us. The boys opened their calendars and put together their little Lego kits, and then put them BACK in the Lego Advent calendar, as there was no place to put them. Enter in my bright idea: How about an Advent Lego shelf?

Why not?!

Off to the garage I go, after a quick call to the handy husband to see if there were any pieces of wood that were off limits - he's building a new hunting palace blind.

I was in luck!

After literally minutes of planning, I was armed with a scribble piece of paper with measurements, and my trusty 20+ year old chop saw. Luckily I got my pieces cut quickly, because the 5 pound dog decided that my carefully made plans looked like a good placemat and got dog food and drool all over them.

I made two shelves, since I have two boys, and sharing is always dicey.

For one shelf, you need:
Wood - I used a 2x4 cut in half lengthwise that I found in the garage, and a random piece of pegboard that looked like the right width.

Superglue - I used Gorilla Brand because that's what Santa brought me in my stocking last year

Lego Baseplate - I used this

Spray Paint - I used Rustoleum 2x in Nutmeg and Key Lime, leftover from summer projects

Screws - Mine were 3/4" #8 wood screws that I inherited from my grandfather

Drill/Bits

Cut list
From the 2x2 (2x4 ripped in half):
3 pieces 2"1 piece 4"

1 piece 6"
1 piece 8"
1 piece 10"
1 piece 12"

From pegboard, or whatever piece of approximately 1/4" thick wood you have laying around:
1 piece 2" x 22" (Make it whatever size you want. This is just what I did, mainly because it was already cut from the hunting palace project.)

Assembly:

Take 2 of the 2" pieces of  2 x 2 and the 2"x 22" piece of whatever you are using (plywood, pegboard, whatever) and spray paint them brown.

Spray the rest of the pieces green.

Wait until everything is dry.
Seriously.
Wait.
Walk away for a day.
Don't mess with it.
Just wait.
(Guess what I'm not good at.)

While that's drying, cut your baseplates. I probably should have bought green baseplates, but these grey ones were SUPER cheap, and I didn't come up with the tree shelf idea until about 2 minutes before USPS showed up with them, so there you go.

Initially, I cut my plate into 4 dot x 32 dot strips. To do this, I used a utility knife and a carpenter's square. It was easy. First score the plate, then bend it to break it along the score line. I only needed one pass with the utility knife. I found scoring the back was easier that scoring the front, although when bending and snapping (he he he) I managed to get a blood blister - so random.







Once you have the strips, you can cut the lengths. I kinda guesstimated what I would need, and what I could get with the least waste. (all measurements are in DOTS)
Strip 1  - 26 x 4  and 4 x 4 (2x4 as waste)
Strip 2 - 22 x 4 and 10 x 4 (no waste)
Strip 3 - 18 x 4 and 14 x 4 (no waste)
Strip 4 - 4 x 4 and 4 x 4 (24 x 4 waste - save it for something else)
If you want your shelves longer, adjust as you see fit.

Once the paint was FINALLY dry(ish) I glued the plates to each shelf.

If it looks like I have a lot of pieces, it's because I'm making two sets of shelves.

I lined my pieces up like a tree, drilled some pilot holes, and then fastened with the wood screws (this is where the pegboard shines, because I didn't have to drill holes OR measure - double SCORE). My shelves are about 2 1/4" apart.

I kind of wish this had been cut straight, but oh, well.

Ta Da!

I thought about adding a star to the top, but I think I'm cool with how they turned out.

Truth be told, these will likely never be hung, instead they will sit on top of the Ikea Trofast in my living room where my kids can mess with them. If you want to hang them, go for it!