When we were putting things back into the Master Bedroom Closet, after having the floors refinished, I remembered that the shelves over the clothes always seemed to be not quite deep enough. Pillows and blankets and quilts always seemed to want to flow over the front edge. But the supports for the shelves would have allowed them to be deeper.
So I thought, why not add a 1x3 to the length of the shelf, bringing it another 3 inches out? The shelves have a routed edge on the front, so we probably want to add the space to the back end, effectively moving the existing shelf out 3 inches and filling in the space created in the back.
We bought 2 pieces of 1x3 7 feet long. The current shelves are pine, stained to look like oak, but such a long span, unsupported except at the ends suggests we would do better with a hardwood. Home Depot only had two hardwoods -- white oak and poplar. We picked poplar (much less expensive) for $26.16 and then stained it to be closer in color to the existing shelf.
While we were at it, we took the two shelves, sanded them down and put a coat of polyurethane on the top side. We also put a coat of polyurethane on the 1x3's.
Leaving that to dry overnight, the next day we were able to reinstall the shelves plus their extensions in the closet.
Along the way, we realized that there is another similar set of shelves on the other side of the closet with the same problem, asking for a similar solution. And maybe we should check all the other closets.
Update: After a couple weeks, I noticed that the two boards -- the larger one and the new 1x3 -- were bowing in different ways, creating a definite disjointed nature at the joint where they abut. It seemed the easiest way to fix this was to tie them together, and the simplest way to do that would be with a mending plate. So I bought a pack of 4 bronze colored mending plates and screws from Home Depot and put two on each of the two shelves. They divide the length of the shelf (7 feet) into three 28-inch sections.
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