DIY hexagon shelves

I am so excited to share this project Ryan and I have been working on with you!  We just finished it tonight, and I just had to share!

I posted about our little gallery wall here.  It looked great, but we still needed something over the couch, since the wall was just blank and looked so empty.

(So...I couldn't find a picture with with gallery wall up and no shelf, boo.  Just pretend the pictures are up over the credenza.  The wall over the couch looks so empty right?  Right.)

I wanted to have a single pieces of art or something, since I didn't want to compete with the busyness of the gallery wall.  I found a couple if ideas that I was interested in on Pinterest.  One involved yarn, which is actually pretty cool and I might try somewhere else in the house, but the other idea was for a hexagon shelves.  (This was the other project I mentioned in my last post, that we needed the miter saw for.  It worked great and we couldn't have done it without the saw.)

I thought I would give a brief tutorial of how we made our shelves.  it was pretty easy, and went together really quickly.  It only took use two nights.  I used this tutorial that I found through Pinterest.

We used poplar wood that we purchased from Home Depot.  It was one of the cheapest woods, and you buy it buy the foot, so you can get exactly how much you need.  We used 1"x3" wood, because I wanted the shelves to be wide enough to hold things but not stick out too far from the wall since they would be over the couch. 

We cut the wood into 8" pieces, and mitered each of the edges at a 30 degree angle.

Once the pieces are cut out, we used wood glue to glue the angled edges together. 

We then used a staple gun to fully secure the corners together.  We put staples on both the front and back.  The seams are actually really secure once they were stapled together.

We made two halves of the hexagon and then put them together.

Our first finished hexagon!

We decided to make five hexagons.  After making all five, we played around with the arrangement until we found one that we liked.  I didn't want it to be too symmetrical or too spread out. We again, used staples to hold the hexagons together, but this time we only stapled on the back, since we didn't want to see more staples than we had to on the front.  Since it was only staples on the back, the seams were not very stable, so we had to be careful moving it around once it was assembled.

Then we had to decide what color to paint or stain the hexagons.  Ryan suggested staining them a natural wood tone, but we have a lot of wood furniture in the living room already so I didn't want it to be wood overload.  I debated about painting it a fun bright color, but I was concerned about it competing with the gallery wall and looking too busy.  Finally, I had to brilliant idea to paint it white.  All of the wood trim in the house is painted white, so it really helped to tie in the trim with the rest of the room.   I am really glad we decided to go with white, it looks so fresh and clean!

We used three brackets on the back to hang it.  Since it is made out of poplar, it isn't too heavy, so I think the brackets will be okay.  They make me a little nervous, but until we find something better to hang it with, it will work for now.

Did I mention that I LOVE the way it turned out?!  Seriously, it makes me so happy!  I am still playing around with what little knick-knacks I want to put on it.  I am even considering leaving it empty to be more of an art piece instead of a shelf.  Not totally sure yet...opinions are welcome!!