I’m back! Yesterday I showed you how to build these Rustic Modern Floating Shelves and today I’m back to show you how easy it is to install them.

If you can find a stud, (which the hubs says clearly I can, cause I found him…) then you can do this.

Step 1: Decide the spacing

The first thing you’ll need to do is decide on the placement of your shelves. I actually made 5 shelves, but ended up only using 4 because I wanted them to be a bit further apart.

My first step in deciding the placement of my shelves was to center them with the coffee table, so they made visual sense. Remember, this is a giant wall that leads into my dining room with no definition. A problem these shelves fixed.

Step 2: Mark the placement of each shelf

Then I decided how low I wanted my lowest shelf and taped it off with a 43 inch piece of tape (to match the size of my shelf) and marked it in the exact center. I also made a small mark on my shelf in the exact center so that when I held it up I could match up the marks.

Then I placed my top shelf the same way, took a measurement between the 2 (the top and the bottom) and divided by 3 to get the space between each shelf.

Mine ended up being 20 inches apart.

I taped each one, used a stud finder to mark the studs just above the tape, marked my center point on the wall, and drew a line at the top of each piece of tape. Then removed the tape.

Step 3: Attach each shelf to the wall

I held the shelf up to the line, matching up my center points and we double checked to make sure it was level.

Then we used a 2 inch drywall screw to screw through the back board of the shelf and directly into the stud.

Don’t worry about how centered your screws are, the important part is to hit at least 2 studs.

Step 4: Place tops on each shelf

Once all of the shelves were up, I placed the tops on each shelf and spent the next few days playing around with what I wanted to put on them.

The two tone wood is probably my favorite detail of this project. It definitely goes with the modern feel of my home and ties in with my new mid century modern Credenza perfectly.