Upcycled Guitar Shelf - 7 Days of Thrift Shop Flips - Day One!

17 August

If you read my last post then you know how behind I am with everything 😧 and I wasn't sure I was even going to be ready for today's post!

If you're new here, I do a week-long series of posts in honor of National Thrift Shop Day each year. Today is National Thrift Shop Day... you can celebrate by visiting your favorite thrift shop (if you're like me you celebrate all year long 😊!)

To be honest, I'm still behind and I definitely don't have all the projects for this series done but I'm going for it anyway!! I mean what's life without some risky moves right?! 😁

Upcycled Guitar Shelf - 7 Days of Thrift Shop Flips - Day One!

So, I must confess that someone gave me two old, beat-up guitars, I didn't get them at a thrift store. But I see them there all the time so this project is definitely something you could make from a thrift shop find!

I didn't feel bad using this guitar because it was in pretty bad shape already.

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Supplies Needed to Make Your Own

Old guitar
Wood glue
Clamps
Utility Knife or saw (to cut the shelves)
Thin plywood scraps

I was able to remove the whole front veneer in one piece (no picture sorry!) then I removed what was left showing below.

The back was pretty thin so I reused the front veneer and glued it over the back with wood glue to add a little stability and so that I wasn't wasting as much! I weighed it down with some bricks while it dried.

There were some little wooden braces inside the guitar already so I used those and added some little side bracket pieces to add my shelves.

I made my shelves with scraps of thin plywood leftover from my kitchen backsplash and glued them in place with wood glue and clamped them to dry.

The shelves look pretty crooked in this picture and actually, I think they are a little but most of how they appear here is the angle of the picture I think, they don't look that bad in real life. If you decide to make one, I would suggest checking the little wooden braces that are inside the guitar to make sure they are level before you add your shelves.

Some old guitars will still have their labels inside. This one did not and it had a hole in it that needed to be covered so I printed a label I found online and used it to cover the hole and give my guitar shelf a cool look.

I like the black label but you can find light-colored labels too.

I used a sawtooth hanger and attached it to the solid area where the neck attaches to the body to hang it.

I decided to leave my shelf in its natural wood state but it would be really cool to paint it inside too... or add wallpaper to the back (kind of like I did with my Upcycled Drawer Shelf).