A few months ago, I wrote a post about how to decorate stylishly while also recognizing the demands and needs of your pet overlords (or faithful best friends, if you have dogs instead of cats). In said post, I showed a photo of the tower we have for our cats, and explained that I thought it was among the more aesthetically-pleasing variations in the cat tower family:

That may be true, but my tolerance of said cat tower began to decline precipitously as we continued to work on the picture window side of the living room.

The opposite side of the living room looks like this, and has pretty much been constant since we first did our living room makeover in the fall (except for the side table, which was a relatively new acquisition from an awesome vintage store in Burlington, VT):

But meanwhile, the opposite side of the room, against the picture window, has been a continuous work in progress.

We started here:

But I knew that eventually I wanted to add seating over there so that the room didn’t feel so oriented around the sectional facing the TV. Then we scored The Chair and our new end tables, and brought in an old rocker we had, leaving us with this:

Things were starting to get crowded….

Then finally I found a replacement for the rocker at the Brimfield Antique Show, a mid-century lounge chair that I fixed up with new webbing and furniture polish last week. That left us with this:

Getting closer….

But the closer to “finished” that side of the room got, the more the cat tower drove me crazy. It’s hard to tell completely from these photos, but it really juts into the doorway to the hall, and makes everything feel more busy and crowded.

Fortunately, I had a plan. For the longest time, I’ve been dreaming of building something on the walls for the cats, like this:

Or this:

So this past weekend, I finally did it. I built some cat shelves.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted them to look like and changed my mind a bunch, but ultimately I decided I wanted them to be relatively simple but also colorful.

First, I bought some simple wood boards at Home Depot — an 8′ length of 1″x6″ for most of the shelves, plus two 1″x12″x10″ oak pieces for two slightly larger shelves where I hope the cats will actually lay down. I also bought simple “L” bracket corner braces, two for each shelf (I was planning on six shelves, so 12 brackets total). Four of the brackets were larger, for the two bigger shelves.

Then I got to work. First, I cut four 11″ segments from the 8’x6″ board on my table saw. The 12″x10″ pieces were already cut.

I gave the corners a quick sanding to remove any roughness, then I stained the boards with a Minwax stain. I originally tried a lighter color (Golden Pecan):

But like with the colorful leaning mirror I built a few weeks ago, I didn’t like the lighter look so I did an additional coat in the much darker (and aptly named) “Dark Walnut” that I already had from a previous project. I guess I just don’t like Golden Pecan….

I let the stain sit for 15 minutes before wiping off excess, and let each side dry for four hours before flipping them over and doing the other side.

For the brackets, I decided I wanted to paint each set a different color, so I sifted through my collection of leftover spray paint and found some bright colors I liked. I knew I wanted a coral/pink in addition to what I found, so I also grabbed the leftover paint from my coral TV stand project. I set up all the brackets in pairs like so:

I gave them all a coat of primer intended for metal items, and then moved onto painting them. To avoid overspray that would get on nearby brackets, I constructed a simple shield out of cardboard that I put around each pair as I sprayed:

Within a few minutes, I had six sets of colorful brackets (the coral color I just painted on with a brush, since it wasn’t spray paint).

I also wanted the screws to match the bracket colors, so inspired by Naomi’s incredible door painting extravaganza, I grabbed a piece of cardboard and poked holes in it so that all the screws were sticking out with their heads exposed. I grouped them in sets according to which pair of brackets they went with.

Then I used the same cardboard shield to protect them while giving each set a coat of spray paint in the color corresponding to their bracket pair.

The hole-poking took a little while (I just used some scissors), but otherwise it was a very straightforward process.

Once the shelves and brackets had thoroughly dried, it was time to assemble! First I attached the brackets to the underside of each shelf with my drill and a screwdriver. I used one shelf as a flat surface to simulate the wall, to make sure the brackets were positioned so that the shelf would sit flush against the wall once mounted. I set each bracket 2″ in from the edge.

Next I carried them all upstairs to their new home. I moved the cat tower out of the way, and got to work. Murphy supervised skeptically from The Chair.

To mount them, first I determined how high I wanted the highest one to be and how low the lowest, and measured that distance (it ended up being 50″). Then I marked the midpoint of that, so that I would have three evenly spaced shelves — top, middle, and bottom. These would be my right-most shelves. Along the left edge of the wall, I then marked an offset of 12.5″ above and below the middle marking, so that along the left edge I would have two shelves evenly staggered from the right shelves. I had originally planned to do a third shelf on the left side too, but it would have been too high (the cats wouldn’t have been able to fit on it below the ceiling) so I just went with two.

I started mounting them with the lowest one first, holding it to the height mark I’d made and using my level to make sure it was straight.

I marked the holes in the brackets onto the wall with a pencil, drilled in these spots, and then attached the shelf using the colored screws corresponding to the bracket color.

I worked my way up the wall using this system, putting the deeper shelves along the right side so they wouldn’t jut out into the door way as much.

Then I stepped back and admired my handiwork.

From an aesthetic perspective, I love them — they’re so much less bulky than the cat tower, and I think work perfectly in the space.

Functionally, I’m not sure yet. We’ll see if the cats take to them. (UPDATE: The cats have *not* taken to them — see my full post on how bratty they’re being about their lovely shelves. UPDATE UPDATE: I gave up and took them down — the cats just weren’t digging them. Oh well, live and learn!)

Here is Murphy being posed on them:

And leaving immediately.

He’s also doing a lot of this:

I think it will take a bit for them to explore this new space, but I’m hopeful. Murphy, at least, is a pretty adventurous and acrobatic cat. I may end up putting some dark carpet remnants on each one to give them some traction (and some softness for lounging), so I’ll keep you posted. But for now, at least I’m loving how they look! That’s what’s important, right?

 

(Sharing at Weekend Re-Treat Link Party, Two Uses Tuesday, Tip Me Tuesday, One Project at a Time, Thrifty Decor Chick, Remodelaholic, and Link Party Palooza)