I’ve been wanting to build something out of industrial pipe for the last few years, but I never really had a good reason to try my hand at pipe fitting (all the professional pipefitters in the world are glaring at me right now).
I’ve seen lots of great projects. End tables, curtain rods, paper towel holders. Even dog beds.
So I got busy in the bathroom last weekend building some new industrial pipe shelves.
Because hey, if you’re going to use plumbing pipe for a DIY project anywhere in your house, it might as well be in the bathroom.
A couple years ago when we renovated my son’s bathroom and made it handicap accessible, we opted to use vintage gym baskets as “shelves”. You can see more of that initial renovation on my Industrial Style Child’s Bathroom post.
The problem was a gym basket, as fun as it looks, just doesn’t have enough usable surface area to be used as a shelf.
There I said it. Gym baskets just don’t work that well.
I can not tell you how many times I sat down on the potty, bumped the toilet lid and the razor fell over and hit me in the back. And since this doubles as a guest bathroom, you just can’t be having razors cutting everyone’s back all up.
Margie – “Why do you have a bunch of band-aids on your back, Susie?”
Susie – “Oh, I spent the night at Pam’s house.”
Margie – “Enough said.”
So we decided to ditch the vintage gym basket look and go for a more traditional shelving idea. Well, as long as you consider industrial pipe and reclaimed lumber “traditional”.
DIY Industrial Pipe Shelves Tutorial
Supplies:
For 3 shelves we used
- 6 3/4″ Floor Flanges
- 6 3/4″ Caps
- 6 3/4″ x 8″ Nipples
- 1 1/4″ x 8 – 3.18 cm Coarse Thread Drywall Screws
- 1 Board cut to the length you need (in our case we used reclaimed lumber that was roughly 2″ wide x 6″ deep x 5′ long, cut in thirds – if you buy a new board from the hardware store, have them cut it to length for you)
- Black Spray Paint (I used less than 1 can of Rustoleum’s Universal Hammered Paint & Primer In One in the black color)
- Measuring Tape
- Phillips head screwdriver, handheld or electric as you prefer
- Pencil
- Level
(A) Coarse Thread Drywall Screws / (B) Floor Flange / (C) Nipple / (D) Cap
Instructions:
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- If you have shelves already in place, remove those shelves and patch any holes if necessary
- Wipe the grease and grime off your plumbing parts. I used soap and water for the floor flanges and the caps and since the nipples had tape wrapped around the price stickers, I used some Goo Gone on those. I think they are covered in “greasy stuff” so they don’t rust while at the store, which reminds me, be careful when carrying them around the store while wearing a white shirt. Been there, done that, not doing it again.
- Screw one floor flange and one cap onto each nipple (ouch). These will be your brackets.
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- Spray paint the brackets and allow to thoroughly dry.
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- Decide where you want shelves to be.
- If possible, try to align your flanges with wall studs. We were only able to do this on one side of the shelf, due to the size of the shelves, but still felt they were pretty darn sturdy. You may want to use dry wall anchors if you are unable to hit a stud with your placement of the brackets.
- It looks best to have at least 2 1/2″ – 3″ between the outside of the bracket and the outside end of the board.
- Position your first bracket on the stud and screw into place.
- You can use a pencil to mark the floor flange holes onto the wall if you want to drill pilot holes first. I went straight into the drywall without pilot holes though. I’m wild like that.
- Hold your second bracket in place, put the board on top of the bracket and the level on top of that. Once the board is showing it is in a level position, screw the 2nd bracket into place.
- Screw remaining shelves into place the same way making sure they are spaced equal distances apart and all the brackets are placed vertically in line with each other.
- Stand back and admire your handiwork.
Really these industrial pipe shelves are probably one of the easiest DIY projects out there. They give you so much bang for your buck!
And just in case you need a visual reference, this is what the plumbing pipe items look like on the shelf at Home Depot.
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- Floor Flanges
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- Nipples
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- Caps
Or in case you want to use the Home Depot Order Online & Pick Up In Store option, here are where the items can be found online:
3/4 in. Black Malleable Iron FPT Floor Flange
3/4 in x 8 in Black Steel Nipple
3/4 in Black Malleable Iron Cap
3/4 in Galvanized Pipe Straps
I love having them do all the shopping for me and then I can just quickly pop in, grab my cart full of stuff up front, pay for it and get back home FAST. Just make sure you put it in the shopping cart called Pick Up In Store Today.
Have you taken the plunge and made anything fun out of plumbing pipe lately? (You know, there are really no good plumbing puns out there if I have to resort to a “plunge” reference!)
EDITED TO ADD: My number one asked question about this project is what to do if you want to attach the pipes to the boards.
Now in my case, the weight of the boards are enough to keep the wood in place and I don’t have anyone in the house who would be pulling down on the shelves or trying to climb up on them.
But if you want to secure the wood to the pipes, you can attach pipe straps to the bottom of the wood, by placing a strap around each pipe and screwing them up into the wood shelves. Below are photos of what the part looks like on the shelf at Home Depot.
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- Pipe Straps
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- Out Of The Package
UPDATE: I’ve collected some other Industrial Pipe Projects for you from around the internet and listed them in my 10 Best DIY Industrial Pipe Projects.
Other posts you may enjoy:
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- Wood Slice Owl
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- Zinc Top Table
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- Succulent Log Planter
I love this idea so much! Very cute ♥
You have GOT to be kidding me! Pam, I am making the EXACT shelves AS I TYPE THIS. I saw some in a restoration hardware catalog, and I’m like “I can make that.” And guess what else? They’re going in the bathroom that I just painted grey… above the potty. Great minds think alike, eh?
No way!!! We were separated at birth, I tell you!
Awesome Pam. Love this. Have a great week ahead.
Kris
I love it!!!!!!
They look very nice & a big improvement over the baskets, which don’t hold much, as you said. Does your son like them?
He does!
What a fantastic job you did! Love these. We are just in the process of redoing our main bath and I’m wanting some wood farmhouse shelves. This may do the trick and I so appreciate the Home Depot shelf view. 😀
Love them, Pam! Oooing and awwing here!
Luv the look! Once again we are thinking very much alike as I am going to do a variation of this in my laundry room. Hope mine look as nice as yours!!! Thanx for the inspiration!
I love this.
Will you come to my house and do it for me?
clever. looks great.
The shelves turned out wonderfully, Pam! I LOVE the look and they are so functional, too!
These look excellent! I just did something similar myself, and I was wondering how far apart you spaced your shelves vertically…
We ended up spacing them 12.5 inches from the bottom of one flange to the bottom on the next one vertically. And the bottom of the flange for the 1st shelf is 13″ above the top of the toilet tank. That spacing seemed to make sense with lining them up so by the time we got to the top shelf it wasn’t so high that it wasn’t useful.
Probably one of the best DIY tutorials I’ve run across, largely because of the source pics at the end. Otherwise I’d be stumbling all over the place looking for the parts. I’ve been thinking about doing a more “industrial” theme in my kitchen and this would really fit the bill.
Thanks Susan! I thought it’d be nice to see what they look like in the store!
Do you find that the shelves are unstable? I have a 2 year old who likes to climb and I’m afraid he might pull the shelf down.
Oh, no. Not stable enough for a 2 year old 🙂 I would put pipe clips around the pipes and screwed up into the bottom of the shelves in that case. That would keep the boards firmly attached to the pipes. My boards are simply setting on top of the pipes in the photos. Here’s what they would look like at Home Depot or Lowes – http://bit.ly/PipeClamps .
I’ve been looking for something industrial to go into our master bathroom after we are done renovating it (we took on 100 year old home!) This is perfect…THANK YOU!!!
I keep thinking about making these, because they look awesome! Do the wooden boards move or seem unstable on the pipes?
I did this in master bathroom!! We love it!!
Do you glue down the wood to pipes or secure the wood in any way? Thinking of doing this in a kids room but would want to secure it…Any suggestions?
I did not, but you definitely should if children will be around them (which sounds odd since it’s in my son’s bathroom, but he’s disabled and wouldn’t be pulling on them so I skipped that step for us). I would put pipe clips on the underside screwing up into the shelves to keep them in place. You can paint them to match the pipes. You can buy them anywhere, but here’s what they look like at Home Depot – http://bit.ly/PipeClamps .
You would only need two pipe clips per shelf. Before you paint the hardware, run the pipes, etc. through a dishwasher if you have one or five them a good hot water/detergent wash. This will remove any oil, etc. from the pipes and make the paint stick much better
Hi Pam,
These shelves are beautiful. It’s gonna be my first DIY. I am so excited to start. Just couple of questions, where did you buy the reclaimed timber from? Will they cut it to the size you want? Thank you once again for such neat step by step post.
The wood I used was from a little local shop (they sell farmhouse decor and stuff like that and just happened to have some boards sitting there one day I stopped in). But Home Depot just started selling a similar looking wood which they call barn wood and they can cut to size for you right there in the store.
Very nice job! Keep it up 🙂
Hi!
I have a couple of quick question: I noticed that your boards aren’t exactly flush with the ends of the pipes. Does this cause a problem? Also, I noticed you don’t have the boards secured on the bottom. Is that necessary? I love your thick “boards”. Did you custom cut them?
Thanks!
You did a wonderful job!
Where did you find the lumber for the shelves?
Love this project! Thank you for sharing it with us! Quick question though–how many screws do you use on each side? Is it only one per floor flange? Sorry if you mentioned it and I just missed it. :/
Thanks again!!
No problem, it’s 4 screws per floor flange.
These are Amazing.. I’ve pictured this in my head now for years, i’m so glad someone finally got it right.. Thank you!
Curious what this project cost total. Pipe materials can be pretty pricey. I like to know final cost before getting into a project.
They are not super inexpensive, no. If I remember correctly they were about $20 a shelf.
Fun and practical projects. I enjoyed your humor and the ideas!
Hi how do you attach the wood to the piping so the shelves stay put
I just amended the tutorial to tell you how to do that and I said: “In my case, the weight of the boards are enough to keep the wood in place and I don’t have anyone in the house who would be pulling down on the shelves or trying to climb up on them. But if you want to secure the wood to the pipes, you can attach pipe straps to the bottom of the wood, by placing a strap around each pipe and screwing them up into the wood shelves.”
And then I showed photos of what the pipe straps look like on the hardware store shelf. You would probably want to paint them to match the shelves.
Sadly, pipes and flanges have gone up so much in price lately. The flanges here are almost $9 each! We planned to make three shelves but it was going to cost $100 in pipes alone. 😔 We have some butcher block remaining from a kitchen reno and planned to use that for shelves. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
The barn wood and pipes are very heavy. What did or would you use to anchor them into the drywall? Especailly if no studs line up with the space? What size anchor and type?