This weeks blog post is about another one of our lockdown projects. I'm going to show you how to turn that old damaged guitar you've got lying around into a beautiful shelf to display all your special trinkets!
We achieved this with stuff we had lying around and some basic tools. And you can too!
Let us know how you get on over on Facebook or Instagram!
What You Need
An acoustic guitar. Preferably a broken one!
Jig Saw
Cordless Drill
Hand Saw
Wood for shelves
PVA or Wood Glue
Hot Glue Gun
Fairy Lights
Paint (If you want to paint it)
A Sharpie if you want to add a quote
Step 1
Remove the Strings! Loosen the tuning keys and remove the pegs. They should pop off pretty easily but pliers may come in handy!
Our guitar is a lovely shade of lilac so you see why we wanted to paint it! If yours is natural wood then you might want to leave it!
Painting it was a bit of a hassle to be honest, but I liked the idea of the inside being white along with the fairy lights.
If it was natural wood instead of purple then I would definitely have left the exterior.
Step 2
Mark out where you are going to cut. Check the inside of the body to check for obstructions around the edge. Get your Jig saw out and go for it! Phill used the drill to make holes in the tricky corners so we could get it as neat as possible.
Get the sandpaper out and neaten it up! Smooth out the rough bits and make it safe.
This is also a good time to decide where you want the shelves. There is no right or wrong to this! You could have the shelves in any direction and any pattern. The guitar doesn't need to stand upright. You could have the shelves going horizontally. It's completely up to you.
You will notice the pieces of wood inside the body. We removed these but kept them! They came in handy to help strengthen our shelves.
Step 3
Cut the shelves to fit. You can do this using a hand saw like us or a table saw if you are in a workshop. Phill had plenty of offcuts in the back of the van so this is what we used. We then attached the shelves using PVA glue. If the shelves are clamped and left to dry for the correct amount of time then they will be very secure. Realistically you are not going to be putting anything too heavy on these shelves so this technique is perfect.
At this stage we also decided to save the bridge section from the guitar and add it to the bottom as shown above. It added some character and also filled in a weird gap.
Step 4
Get your paint on!
We used stuff we had lying around. A brown none drip gloss was what we used to cover the purple on the body, neck and head of the guitar. I then used some white chalk paint for the interior and shelves.
I had recently bought Phill a wood burning kit and the idea was to use this to etch a quote into the wood. We tried this, but it didn't work on the painted wood. Which is fine! It's all about learning right! So we used a Sharpie! I printed the words out and we used carbon paper to trace the outline. Then filling it in with the Sharpie was pretty simple!
I'm happy with how this came out. It wasn't exactly what I first imagined but that's what its all about this DIY lark!
Step 5!
Time to add your finishing touches. We wanted to add lights! Now there are soooooooo many other things you could use to make the wires less visible etc. but we had some old battery operated fairy lights that were perfect for what we needed. We just used a hot glue gun to attach these around the edges and hid the battery pack behind the neck. Once all of our bits and bobs were on the shelves you could hardly see the wire so it works for us!
I'm so pleased with the way that this has turned out! It fits perfectly within our living room and will go hand in hand with the next project we have planned!
I hope you have found this useful and we really would like to hear if you end up giving it a go!
Phill made a bracket to hang it on the wall using a lump of wood and some steel rods!
All in all, this project cost us nothing and kept us busy for a couple of days.
The perfect Lockdown pastime.
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