Crafting a DIY Photo Ledge from Scrap Wood: Step-by-Step Guide

Our hallway doesn’t get a whole lot of natural light and has always been kind of meh. We had a mismatched gallery wall in our rental before we bought our house but it was more college dorm live, laugh, love than the modern boho farmhouse thing we’re trying to get at in our new home. After the baby was born in February we did a newborn lifestyle session in our home and we knew we wanted to display the photos somewhere, mostly because portrait photos are expensive and we’d better get our money’s worth in nostalgia on the daily as we walk by. A DIY photo ledge is also great because you can switch out your photos or artwork seasonally or update them without needing to keep filling holes in the wall for different frames.

This DIY photo ledge was seriously so quick – it took under an hour to complete (not counting wood glue drying time) and it was completely free because we used scrap wood and other materials we already had (and that you probably have, too!).

Tools & Materials

These measurements and materials depend on how many photo ledges you want to make – we’ve seen cool ones that are just one or a whole wall of like four of them. We did two at 55 inches long because that best fit along our section of wall, so feel free to adjust as needed.

• (2) 1×2 at 6 feet
• (2) 1×3 at 6 feet
• (2) 1×4 at 6 feet
• 1.5-inch screws
• Wood stain (we used Special Walnut)
• (This list is assuming you have everything in our Getting Started with DIY Toolbox)

How We Did It

A note on choosing your wood: Because this project has all the pieces aligned and flush at the ends, learn from our mistakes and really take your time choosing wood that’s straight and not warped in any way or it’ll mean your edges don’t look as clean as they could. If you’re using scrapwood like us your choices are a little more limited, but if you’re in the store take your time!

Measure and Cut

Cut all your pieces down to the same length. For us, this was 55 inches.

Lay your 1×4 piece down flat (this will be the back piece that’s up against the wall). Put the 1×3 piece vertically on top of the edge of the 1×4, making sure the 1×3 and 1×4 are lined up flush on one side, and clamp them together to hold in place. You’ll want your eventual ledge to be flat on the bottom, so you’re essentially making a kind of U shape with the 1×4 in back, 1×3 on the bottom, and 1×2 in front. Here’s a photo of the underside of the finished product to get a better idea:

Use your 1.5-inch screws to secure the two pieces together from the back side of the 1×4 into the 1×3, about three or four times along the whole piece depending on how long your ledges are going to be.

Once those are screwed together, sit the piece so the 1×3 is now flat on your work surface and the 1×4 is standing up behind it.

Glue Down Your Front Piece

Hold your 1×2 piece along the front edge of your 1×3 and use a thin bead of wood glue all along the 1×2 and then clamp the 1×2 to the 1×3 as the front lip. Make sure there aren’t any drips seeping out and then let dry for a few hours. You could use nails if you want, but we found wood glue was perfectly fine – the only thing putting any pressure against that joint are the leaning frames in the end which really isn’t enough to warrant the extra security, in our opinion.

Sand and Stain

See how simple it is?? Sand down any rough edges of the finished product and give it a coat of stain and polycrylic. We used special walnut which we’ve found ourselves using on a lot of different projects throughout our house and it’s a nice, warm wood color that doesn’t pull too orange or red no matter what kind of wood you use.

Hang ‘em Up!

By now you’ve probably invested like three hours total into this project (including a couple hours of wood glue drying time) and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself for making such an impressive DIY photo ledge in a day and with such a small budget. To assemble, we measured an embarrassing number of times because we wanted to make them perfectly centered on our wall area and high enough on the wall that they would be eye level, which is harder to figure out when there’s two of them. (Hint: if you’re doing two like us, the lower ledge was 41 inches from the ground and the upper was 58 inches from the ground.)

You’ve also got to consider what kind of art or photos you’re going to display. Our biggest frame was 11×14 so obviously the ledge had to be at least that distance between them.

Then just use a few more of the 1.5 inch screws to secure the ledge to the wall through the back 1×4 piece (we only used two screws on each ledge and did it in spots we knew would stay covered with artwork.)

We used a mix of 5×7, 8×10 and 11×14 frames to add different height and sizes, but it took way longer than it should’ve to work out how many frames we needed and which photos went in which size but that’s 100% user error.

Quick tip on frames: Sometimes frames can get expensive, especially for gallery walls where you use a lot of them. We always buy gallery wall frames from Michaels and wait for them to do their ‘buy one, get two free’ deal which is pretty often. I think it ended up being about $50 for nine frames.

But there you have it! In one day you’ve made a cute, cheap DIY photo ledge that’ll give art gallery vibes on a back alley graffiti budget.

Like this DIY photo ledge? If you’re looking to use up some more offcuts from the scrap wood pile, check out our DIY scrap wood tile boot tray. Also, sign up to our newsletter where we share all of our favorite DIY updates.