Here’s our take on a picture shelf where the pictures can be slid along two tracks. We saw them in someone’s living room during a local house tour, and later on I noticed they’re easily available online.

We weren’t allowed to take photos during the house tour so I don’t recall if the shelf was U-shaped, with a high back, like these ones one Amazon (link may be broken if you’re reading this in the future).

The mounting screws go into the high back. I probably should have built ours like that, then I could have hidden the screws more easily. But at the time I thought some small L-shape brackets would be fine.

This project gave me the opportunity to learn how to use a router. I put two V groves in the base for the sliding pictures, and rounded off the corners. Don’t look too closely, Mistakes Were Made. But that’s the point of learning, isn’t it?

I was concerned about the depth of the shelves, as they are going into a narrow corridor that links the front of the house to the back. In the end they are about 4” deep, any shallower and the pictures would rest at a very steep angle.

To finish, I sanded and varnished. If you zoom in on the top shelf you can see varnish drips. After I first noticed them, I sanded from 60 grit back to 220 and revarnished. Either I failed to sand them off … or I just put a different set of drips back with the revarnish. hmmmm.

Luckily my wife is not a perfectionist, so she thinks the shelves are great :)