# Building Trophy stand



## stick\shift (Mar 23, 2015)

I would stain and poly it to let the grain show. Keep in mind, painting good wood doesn't make sense to me; if you're going to paint it, use plywood.


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## de-nagorg (Feb 23, 2014)

You want to paint good wood?

Step forward into this. :boxing:

use MDF to paint , What color works with your other décor?

A bright White will show the trophies well.


ED


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

We usually always stain our builds, however we made two tables recently,
one was charging table for our phones and iPads and kennels,
and one was a little accent table. Both these 
tables are a combo of stain and paint. I think they both look good.
I had in mind the whole time to half paint and half stain them. 

The other thing we painted is a in the wall small cabinet, with two 
raised paneled doors.We made it out of oak and I painted it a semi
gloss white to match our walls. The top is poplar that I stained
dark to match the furniture in the room. 
We never made anything from
MDG or plywood. How do you gentlemen finish the edges of plywood? 

Anyhow, you could do a combo of stain and paint. The part that is on the wall
paint to match the wall in a semi gloss and just the shelf part stain to
match your furniture. Keep in mind if you decide to paint the project,
there is no going back to stain, unless you like to suffer and sand and strip
the piece so that you can stain it lain:
That sample shelf is a kind of a bold "here I am piece" ( not that that's a bad thing) however, as soon as I saw it, I thought of half paint and half stain.
I'll get you a pic of painted oak. The texture looks good in IMHO.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Here is the oak cabinet that we painted, The texture in person looks 
quite nice. If we stained the whole thing it would have been too
dominating in the room. The painted cabinet matches the wall.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Hope these pics give you an idea of what I mean -- just stain the shelf part
where the trophies sit, and paint the wood ( the part on the wall) 
to match the wall color
good luck, Joann :smile:


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## de-nagorg (Feb 23, 2014)

That looks good . 

There is a product made for plywood edges. 

Edge Banding, it is a band of real wood in roll form, with an adhesive on the back that is heat activated, roll it out on the plywood edge , heat it with a clothing iron to adhere it, then trim it to fit perfect with a razor knife. 

Sand lightly, not too much , it is thin. 

Then finish with a clear finish.


ED


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## de-nagorg (Feb 23, 2014)

Remembered another way to edge plywood:
Get solid wood that compliments the plywood skin, A 1X6 X length should be enough, use a table saw to rip the 1X6 into 1X # (width that you want) and frame around the plywood with it, thus making it appear as a solid sheet, take care with the corners and sand and finish.


ED


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Ed, I never heard of edge banding. Sounds interesting.

We've ripped down a lot of wood to edge a lot of stuff, mostly 
for design or wood contrast.

We have never made anything from plywood. I always thought
of plywood as rough wood. 

We made a tray recently using birch vaneer and then edged it with
dark stained oak ( I think it was oak) However, we made the oak edge 'proud'
of the tray. I'm sure I posted a pic of it here. 

We've also made other things that we banded with contrasting wood...
one piece is a coffee table for the LR that was formally a mahogany 
desk that we picked up curbside. :smile: The top of the desk that we cut 
down for the coffee table was mahogany vaneer, so we did a series
of moldings on the edge. Again, the edge banding is proud of the top.

That rolled edge wood intrigues me. 

I wonder if the OP Leo, has given any furthur thought to his trophy build?
Stain or paint, or both?


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## 123pugsy (Oct 6, 2012)

Leoalb said:


> Hello,
> 
> I'm doing some slight changes in the interiors of our living room. Throw out the old couches and buy new ones, build a new TV stand and replace damaged light fixtures. And the most important one is building a trophy stand. Till now they were on the top pf a shelf. We will be shifting that from the living do I decide to build a trophy stand. After searching through various models, I found this Zigzag ladder shelf model most appropriate.
> 
> ...


Rosewood.
The one in the pic looks terrible, so glad you decided to go with paint.

I use solid pine boards from HD for wood projects such as that. Screwing plywood together goes against my grain. If you do use plywood, get the veneered stuff which is quite smooth for painting.


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## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

Interesting piece. When I look at that, I wondered how it has any strength. Those joints have very little strength. At first I thought each of the wood panels were screwed to the wall --- that would make it very strong. But if you look closely, there seems to be a piece of angle at the corner holding it all together. The problem is, when they drywalled your room, they probably radiused that corner somewhat with mud. Check your corner with square and straight-edge. You might need a plan to hold it away from the corner a little.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Without seeing the layout of the rest of the room, it's hard to
imaging this corner shelf fitting into a living room.

On second look this morning, it looks clunky.

What about floating shelves, either painted or stained? 

I checked Houz there are over 33 thousand photos of shelf
photos. Perhaps you can gather some inspiration from 
these photos.

Here is the link

http://www.houzz.com/photos/query/floating-shelves/nqrwns

I pulled off this photo to show how graceful floating shelves
can look.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

From Houz...floating shelves that die into a corner.


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## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

I somewhat agree with TwoKnots that the more I look at it, the less I like it. If you look closely, there are varying gaps between some of the panels and the walls --- those don't look good. Plus, as mentioned earlier, you are going to have fun dealing with the corner. You might be better off spacing it away from the wall about an inch or so. You have the screw holes to deal with, but if you are going to paint it, you can use a filler. There is likely a horizontal seam in the drywall 4' from the floor, so you might need to profile the spacer a little.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

It looks like the filled in the back between the shelves with a strip
of molding that was painted white.


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## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Here's a simple one that can easily be built. 
It can be made higher, wider, and it doesn't require
such a big commitment as the attached ladder one,
as it can easily be moved around.

Also, it would adapt nicely to house books and small
decorative pieces; that is if you decide to move
the trophies to another room someday.:smile:

http://www.cymax.com/Winsome-4-Tier-Folding-Shelf-in-Antique-Walnut-94852.htm

Check it out. It's plain and fancy.


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## Leoalb (Aug 11, 2016)

Thanks for all the ideas guys. The stain plus paint work is fabulous. I will do that then. Paint the part on the wall, cream and stain the wood on which the trophy stands.


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