How to Put Up a Shelf

okay so today i'm going to show you how to hang a shelf i showed you how to use a stud finder in my previous video so i'm going to build upon that there's going to be a few tools that you're going to need to need along with that stud finder uh you'll need the stud finder you'll need a tape measure right and eventually i'll i'm going to put together a video that shows some basic tools that you always kind of want to have on hand obviously if you're a homeowner compared to just somebody that's living in an apartment still or uh you're still on the move might not want to gather too many tools but once you get settled down into a home there's certain things that you just want to have around and some are you'll find them your use for them all the time tape measures one stud finder you know is helpful uh it's got a little bit of a luxury but you do need it if you need to find the stud right uh hammer gotta have the hammer right um we're gonna be putting uh i'm going to show you how to use my cordless drill but i'm also going to show you in case you don't have a drill you'll need at least a phillips head screwdriver you'll need a pencil uh here's my drill i highly recommend this drill it's a dewalt um you can usually pick them up on black friday i think for around a hundred dollars i think it came with two batteries and uh it the thing is priceless because i use it all the time and the battery is the important part it holds a charge because if you buy something too cheap you're going to hate it because it's you're going to be fighting it all the time so it won't hold the charge okay and this thing came with two batteries i'm pretty sure it was 99 on black friday okay uh and then also you'll need to have a a level a level's a great thing to have around you can just buy a small one like this just i think it's under five bucks and it just tells you make sure you're hanging the shelf level because you don't want it to be wonky right that wouldn't be good and you can just buy a small one like this and i'll show you you can use your shelf put this on top of your shelf to extend the levels you don't need to buy a big level you can just use a shorter one like this and then use it for a long run still just by putting it on some on a board that's longer before we get started please remember to check with your landlord to make sure that they're okay with you putting holes in the wall some landlords might not be this is my house so i can put holes wherever i want right but please be careful with that don't just start putting holes in a wall and then you go to move and you you lose your damage deposit right so anyway just a little warning there so today i'm going to be putting up the shelf with three of these brackets okay two on the outside and then one in the center the two outside ones are gonna hit a stud both of those will hit studs and then the center one will be i'll be using sheetrock screws so i'll get a chance to show you which sheetrock screw i recommend okay i want my shelf to come out at 54 inches high you might be able to put your shelf wherever you want and you don't care but for me i want it to come out at 54 inches high i've already predetermined that the thickness of the shelf is three quarters inch okay so i need to factor that in if i want the top my shelf to be 54 inches i need to subtract that three quarters inches from where i want the top of this thing to be right so the shelf sits on top of it it comes out at 54. okay so right pay attention to that i've been burned on that myself so just giving you a little dad vice there okay so let's get started over here i've already met i've already determined where the studs are using the stud finder i want it to come out at 54 right so i want to go 53 and a quarter so i'm good there i've already marked my my spot there okay so let's go ahead and put this guy up my shelf i'm going to put my shelf right there where i want the top of it to be okay that's going to be like that and then the hole i want to get into i want to put a a mark where my hole is going to be right it's right there okay so that's my hole okay so most sheetrock is a half inch it's a half inch thick okay so in order to get to that stud i need to go through a half inch sheet rock to get to that stud okay so in my mind i want to get an inch into that stud so i need an inch and a half screw right got to get a half inch in and then an inch sunk into the end of the stud so we need a half one and a half inch screw okay you also gotta factor in especially if this thing if this part is thick right you got to factor in that you got to go through that through your sheetrock right through that through your sheetrock then into the stud okay so what i like to do is do pilot holes and i'm going to use my drill just to make things go faster so i've already marked where i want it i'm going to put in my pilot hole this is where i want it okay so i'm good there now i can just grab my bracket okay so we're gonna go ahead and put up this bracket here i i have a two previous screws from where this bracket used to be i'm actually moving this bracket down um and i figure it's a good opportunity to be able to show you for this particular video so uh and that's why i was kind of emphasizing the 54 inches because my wife decided she wants it down a little bit lower so we're just moving it down for this particular video okay and i had drilled when i said i drilled a pilot hole all i did was take the screw and put it here and then i drilled it okay i didn't actually pull out a drill bit and drill a hole i don't think that's necessary unless you're a perfectionist you probably could but this should be fine okay so then all we're gonna do is we're gonna put that guy in there there we go okay and then i got my other hole down at the bottom and we'll put in our other screw there okay nice and solid okay so now we're gonna make sure that the shelf is gonna be level okay so if you've never used a level before you wanna you want that bubble to be right in the center can you see that i'm using the center one this one right here we're paying attention to that okay so then you just move your whatever you're doing up and down until that bubble is right in the center okay so now i'm going to use i'm going to use my shelf as my level to have it come across like this okay and i'm going to put this on here right so i'm going to show where this bracket's going to be over here right and i already have marked out where my stud is so we got that out i want this to be right in the center right i'm looking at the bubble in the center there and it's it's sitting on this shelf and it needs to come up a little bit come up a little bit come up a little bit right there so now my stud is over here i'm gonna mark the top right there okay the top of my bracket okay so now we're good to go that's the top of my bracket okay now we need to put my bracket up there and we're gonna mark where that hole is going to go okay make sure i got my bracket facing facing the correct way right we want the long one coming out the short one right it would be easy to flip this around right and have it be like that on one side don't want that right or it'd be okay if it was like that as long as it was consistent right but for this i want the longer one to come out so just be careful with that right i'm gonna put this up here and i'm gonna mark the hole okay then go ahead and take my my screw put that here [Applause] okay there we go grab my bracket make sure i got it facing the right way stick it in there in my pilot hole okay okay there we go we're good on that okay now we're gonna do our center one okay our center bracket where we want that to go and basically we're going to do this we're going to use our tape measure we're going to measure in between so the overall is about 40 okay it's 48 and a half okay overall 48 and a half so if we want to divide that in half we're going to be at 24 and a quarter okay so 24 and a quarter right there okay now we can use our shelf again lay that on top of there okay and then i'm gonna be right right there i was a little bit high on my on my marks i'm having to move it down but that's okay i can still draw a line right and i can see where the mark is so the mark's right there okay again that's the top of my shelf grab my other bracket again make sure you gotta turn in the right the correct way right not like this for this particular one we want it like that put it up there we want the top of it to be right there okay and then i'm going to mark my hole again okay so now i'm gonna unveil my amazing sheetrock anchor for you i think it was one of my subscribers the passenger that asked about this and if you don't know which one to pick out this is the best anchor that they make okay it's this this is the one you want to use okay there's a lot of hokey ones out there um that you drill a hole you put it in it's got a spring on it comes up and clamps against your sheetrock those just don't really work really well my brother uh was a cabinet maker and he showed me these years ago and i've never looked back these are the best okay but one thing i think uh i think it was the passenger uh that actually said uh that they she has a problem with them breaking i'm wondering if this is why because when you when you use it you don't want to just come up and try to screw it in i've seen other videos on this too showing it ah just come on up and then just screw it in no because this tip if especially if they're kind of cheaper versions of this that tip will break off so what you want to do is you want to take it and you want to tap it in with your hammer get it started with your hammer okay so we're here okay get it down to where it's right at the threads once it's at the threads then you should be good and i'm going to go ahead and use a screwdriver for this i would normally use my drill but you can force it in with your screwdriver okay there you go you're golden it's just that easy okay so now let's go ahead and put our other put our other bracket up okay and i i like to use i use sheetrock screws like this for a lot of things and those will work fine and this actually they actually because they got a nice coarse thread and they hold really well just by themselves okay uh but you i think some of these will actually fit right in there and work these these uh sheetrock screws though do come with with a sheetrock screw a screw or a screw that goes inside it and they're actually meant for them so it's probably best to go ahead and use them okay so we get our bracket up there okay and then we just screw it in again you see see how much nicer it is with that with that drill you're good here just taking the time to show you it is definitely more work without the drill did i tell you i like the drill okay so there we go there we go you got that now you just want to make sure that that's level okay so we're basically doing the same thing again so for now we're looking at the top we're looking at the top on this particular level and it's got a level like that right so we're good here right so we don't want it to be like that we want to make sure that it's level so you go like this okay looks level to me i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna mark that hole okay now i just swing it out of the way right same thing again we're going to use our sheetrock screw take it up here get it lined up on our hole okay and then tap it in okay i'm tapping it in just to that point right i get it up to where the threads are just sitting against the sheetrock okay okay now this is how easy it is with a a drill okay there we go now we can turn it back down and then we got our screw that we're gonna put in put that here okay we're gold in there we just got to do the same thing with these other with the other two outer ones right so we're gonna go ahead and i need my level stick it on the side make sure that it's level okay good mark my hole got the level out may as well do the other one hopefully you can see this okay mark the hole okay there we go and then these i'm going right into a stud right right into a stud so i don't need to do any of that with the sheetrock screw okay [Music] that was just the tip that fell out sometimes it doesn't stay inside this uh this extender because i don't normally use the extender but i needed to for that particular bracket i'll show you how to use one of these drills up and close in the next two or three videos i'll show i'll make a video on just this drill okay so there we go we got our shelf we put it on top of there put up our our level it's a thing of beauty all we got to do now uh is if i want it centered right i would just measure my outside brackets this is i know this is in the center these two so i just want to measure if i wanted it centered on these brackets or if i want it between the space on my wall you know wherever i want it i'm going to take out my tape measure and measure the distance right to figure out so the overall distance is five feet the overall we knew that was four feet right 48 inches so we basically went six inch overhang on either side right because 12 it's 60 inches minus 48 inches is 12 inches and then we want six inches on this side six inches on this side make 12 right so basically i'm not too worried about it but that's that's six inches and you can kind of go back and forth right to make sure you're going to move it a little bit because it's not exact but there we go and then this particular one i want to screw some screws up into the bottom of the shelf okay just to keep it stable so i can go like that okay and then make sure you're using shorter screws for this because i only got three quarters here right if i use those same screws and they're inch and a half i'm going to come right up through that shelf and you don't want that right so i think that's about it you understand if there's any thing i left out i don't think there is but hopefully this was helpful uh one last thing i want to show you show you if you were going to hang a picture let me show you how to do that let me cut away and then i'll come right back and show you how to do that okay since a picture is kind of light for the most part if it's not all that heavy you don't have to go to all this trouble with uh a sheetrock screw you could probably you could probably get away with with something like this or if it's really light you know you could you could just put a nail in right into the wall but you i think one mistake people make is just putting the just going ahead and hammering away and sticking up that that uh picture but you know if you want it the better way to do it is put it at an angle just go like this put it here and put it down at an angle you might have to get it started while it's flat but try to turn it at an angle right i happen to hit a stud let's just pretend you didn't hit a stud but if and if you think about that think logically that thing is down in there this way so it's as the picture is hanging on it it's kind of holding it in if if you put this in straight then it's got the picture is going to be kind of tugging down on the nail right so if you want it tugging down then it's actually driving it down into the sheetrock hopefully that makes sense all right thank you again and see you next time