Building the Laboratory – Shelves

When working on projects like these I believe form follows function. I prefer to use what I have on hand than get new wherever possible, and you will see that through many of my build posts. I had an abundance of leftover melamine boards and I cut those to size to make these shelves.

The shelf brackets are made from finish wood straps I had. They are 3/4 x 2-3/4 and are each screwed directly in to the studs with decking screws. I used a brace to support the shelves in the back. The braces are made from finish wood I ripped down to 3/4″ wide. They are nailed to the studs and sealed to the shelves with construction adhesive.

I caulked the seams in the shelves, braced them with rectangles I cut off a door jamb and painted the whole thing grey just to bring it all together. You can see from my 3D models the basic layout I am planning for. The shelves revolve around two sizes of bucket. A 5 gallon Husky brand tote, seen filling the lower two shelves. And a shorter 5 gallon HDX brand tote, seen populating the top shelf.

The smaller buckets will be home to the soil grown mother plants while the larger lower shelf buckets will be modified to create various Aeroponic units. At maximum population my shelves will accommodate 112 Aeroponically grown plants. That’s 8 plants per bucket with 7 buckets per shelf. The plan is to take cuttings from the hardy mother plants and plug them in to the Aeroponics systems.

My home made shelves will be a platform for hanging my lights, running electricity, fans and will keep my buckets off the ground and protected in a sanitary space.