How to Make and Hang Wood Fruit Crate Shelves

The new floor plan and stuff switcheroo for the guest room/craft room leaves me with two vintage wooden fruit crates that won't fit in the room with the new plan.

Yay!

I want a new place to stash this stuff and allow my linen closet to hold linens again. Crazy town, I know.

I have a big boring wall above the toilet in the guest bathroom...

I have two crates and three 2013 DIY Goals: create storage, use what I have first before buying materials, and add personality to the guest bathroom...

You can buy wood crates similar to my vintage crates here

(I am including affiliate links in this post for your convince)

...and some extra supplies to make storage wall shelves out of wood crates.

Fruit Crate Storage Shelf

How to Hang Vintage Wood Crates on a Wall

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One issue with vintage wood crates is the wood may not be as sturdy as it looks. Instead of hanging the crate by drilling holes and screws though the back of the crate itself,  I cut a piece of reclaimed wood from my wood stash and screwed it to the back of the crate to use as a cleat of sorts. I screwed the cleat to the center of the crate because the wood at the top of the crate isn't as sturdy as the center section.

I didn't install the screws in a straight line- oops! 

Let's call that Adding Character instead of a Screw Up.

The crates need something to stabilize the top of the crate to the wall because it wobbles a bit since my cleat is in the center of the crate and the reclaimed wood I used to make it is a little wide. I didn't have a thinner piece of sturdy wood to swap out.

I screwed a Hangman Mirror and Picture Hanger (learn more it about it here) to the top of the crate and to the wall. My original plan was to use the Hangman hangers to hang the crates, but I didn't trust that the thin wood I screwed to the hanger to would hold the weight of the crate over time.

Can I tell you how much I love these hangers? I keep Hangman hangers in my workshop because once I discovered how easy they are to use to hang heavy pictures, I always have them on hand. The built in level is my BFF because I'm awesome at installing two hangers that are just a tiny bit off that the item doesn't hang level.

Naturally there isn't a wall stud I can screw the hangers to where I want to hang the shelf. That's when I grabbed the heavy duty drywall anchors from the garage. Drywall anchors will allow me to hang the shelf where I want and keep the crate shelf from crashing off the wall from the weight of the items I put on it. 

You buy heavy duty wall anchors similar to mine here

I drilled a pilot hole in the wall and  used a screwdriver to screw the wall anchor into the wall. Easy!

Then I used my other shelf hanging BFF, my 12 volt impact driver (learn more about it here) to drive the screw that comes with the wall anchor through the wood cleat and into the wall anchor.

I shopped the house for shelf storage containers because the stuff I want to store on the shelf is functional but not pretty to look at. I grabbed the telephone book page storage boxes I made from the craft room closet and loaded them onto the fruit crate shelves.  I'm not sure if I will keep them here or make a new set for this room.  What do you think?
If you'd rather buy than DIY, click to learn more about my favorite options below!

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