HOW TO MAKE IRON PLUMBING PIPE SHELF UNITS

HOW TO MAKE IRON PLUMBING PIPE SHELF UNITS

I've gotten so many nice comments about the iron pipe shelf units we installed in our most recent renovation project (See post FROM MUNSTER MANSION TO MAGNIFICENT), that I thought I would write a quick tutorial about how to make one of these units yourself.  Here is a picture of the two shelf units we installed during this renovation:

I had seen similar units installed by Chip and Joanna Gaines in a kitchen during an episode of Fixer Upper on HDTV, found several examples on Pinterest and couldn't wait until our next home renovation project to make some myself.  I decided to make 5 ft. tall units in this room with 9 foot ceilings so that there would be a full 4 feet of space underneath in case the future owner of the house wanted to put cabinets, extra seating or other furniture below the shelves.  The way I determined the width of each unit was by figuring out how far apart the studs in the wall were and seeing what sizes of pre-finished shelves were available at Lowe's that would be a good match for our wood flooring.  My studs were 16" apart and I found 36" shelves so I attached the pipe supports 32" apart allowing both of them to be attached to studs and give me 2" of overhang on each side.

Here are the materials I used for one 5 ft high unit:
Iron plumbing pipe (there are  1/2", 3/4" and 1" diameter options-I used 3/4"):
18 12" pipes
2 straight "coupling" fittings
6 T shaped connectors
2 elbow connectors
10 floor flanges
4 shelves (I used 36" long x 3/4" wide x 12" deep shelves that were refinished on all sides)
20 2 and 1/2" wood screws
20 1" wood screws
Drywall anchors as needed
Degreaser (I used Simple Green)
Dark bronze spray paint ( I used Rustoleum)

The dark plumbing pipe comes covered in grease, so don't wear good clothes to the store to buy it.  I looked at 3 places and all of the straight sections I pipe I saw came with a big price label throughly attached with packing type tape.  To get the labels and the grease off, I had to soak the pipe in a 5 gallon bucket with water and degreaser for a couple of hours.  Learn from my mistake: if you soak the pipe overnight or leave it sitting in a puddle of water or leave water sitting inside, you will have a lot of rust in less than a day.  If you're after a more rustic, rusty look, that's good.  Otherwise, take the pipe out, stand it up to drain and dry it within a couple of hours.  "Drying" the pipe entails wiping all the grease off with rags, so have plenty on hand.  I used one of my favorite tools, a razor blade, to cut the tape and tags off.

After degreasing, the pipe was still the right color, but I could not find floor flanges (the flat circular piece that attaches to the wall and ceiling) in anything but silver galvanized metal.  My trusty Lowe's rep told me that he had never seen the flanges in the darker metal, so I took him at his word and spray painted all of the flanges (and screws) with the bronze spray paint.  I later saw black iron flanges on Lowes.com and realized my trust had been misplaced.  So, if you find the black ones, use them instead of painting.

The next step was like playing with adult Legos and my daughter and I had fun doing it.  You just have to look at the picture to see how the parts screw together and screw them together.  A word to the wise:  The pipes do not screw together as smoothly without the grease as they would with the grease; therefore, so patience is required to keep the threads straight while attaching the pipe parts together.

By the time I got halfway through the second shelf unit, I realized that things worked best when I tightened the pipes enough to hold everything together well, but not all the way.  The reason is that after I attached the whole support unit to the wall and ceiling, I needed to loosen and tighten some  pipe sections to adjust for any unevenness in the walls and ceiling and to level the shelves.

After putting the pipe sections together, I used a stud finder to find the studs in the walls and marked where each support section would be attached to the ceiling and wall.  Some of the places where the flanges needed to attach to the ceiling fell on wood joists and some didn't, so I used heavy duty drywall anchors in those spots where there was no wood to which I could attach the ceiling flange.

Time to pause for another word to the wise:  HVAC ducts generally run in straight lines between those big ole beams that hold up your roof or second floor.  It's a really good idea to look in both directions from where you're planning to stick a 2 1/2" screw into your ceiling to make sure there isn't a ceiling register in that straight line.  If there is, that register is more than likely attached to a duct that you don't want to make a hole in with your screw, so you'd be better off moving on down the line to the next wall stud.  If you're making two units like I did, the space in between depends on the look you want and how big your wall is, but I left about 42" between the units in case the new homeowners wanted space to mount a flat screen TV between them.  In general, I think it is most pleasing to the eye to separate two units by a space roughly equal to the width of one unit i.e. if you have two 36" units, put them somewhere in the vicinity of 36" apart.

The hardest part of this project is attaching the units to the walls and ceiling.  Use a stud finder, level and pencil to mark straights lines on the walls before you begin, because it's much easier to erase the pencil than touch up the paint on the walls and ceiling after you bang them up trying to measure, level and wrestle the pipe into submission all at the same time.  This is definitely a two person operation.

The reason I used different sized screws was that the flanges that attach to the wall and ceiling have four holes in them located at (if they were on a clock) 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock.  I lined them up so that the holes at 12 and 6 o'clock would attach to the studs and used the 2 1/2" screws in those holes.  The screws in the 3 and 9 o'clock holes may or may not hit the stud, but probably will not, so I used the 1" screws there.  Basically the 1" screws are decorative so that all of the holes in the flange are filled with a screw, but are not functional as the longer screws are actually holding the unit in place.  The other reason for using the shorter screws is that, since they are basically non-functional, it was not worth the added risk that longer screws would run into something else in the walls or ceiling.  If I had had 1/2" or 3/4" screws on hand, I probably would have used them in the 3 and 9 o'clock holes.

The only thing left to do is put the shelves in place.  When I did this, there were several shelves that didn't sit flat or level.  To correct this, I placed a level on each shelf and tightened or loosened the connections between the pipe sections until each shelf sat level.  If one wanted the shelves to be more secure, it might be a good idea to get "C" clamps the diameter of your pipes, snap them on the pipe and screw each shelf to the pipe it rests on.  I wasn't planning to put heavy objects or objects that get used regularly, nor do I have small children, so I skipped that step.

I hope this has been helpful and that you'll be brave and make your own industrial/modern/country/farmhouse shelf units.

This is really an easy DIY project and I love how the look can range from farmhouse industrial to modern to country depending on the rest of the room and the items you put on the shelves.