Record Wall

Musical taste can speak to one’s ideals and experiences. I have had a deep appreciation of music my entire life and I wanted to add some personal flair to the boring walls in my home office. So, I thought hanging biographically representative vinyl records on my wall would be a cool idea. I began with ten albums, bought metal frames, and mounted them evenly spaced on a wall. My long-term goal was to cover this entire wall with albums.

The space next to the wall was reserved for room-scale virtual reality. After I stopped playing VR games, I moved a table under the records to use for both LAN parties and as a workbench. The frequency of my home office occupation increased after 2019 therefore increasing my exposure to the records display. They looked okay above the table, which accumulated junk because I stopped hosting game nights during the plague.

I decided to make shallow shelves to expand the wall of art instead of buying additional frames and tediously measuring each hanging point. A couple of years passed and I’m getting my MBA, spending even more time in the room. I committed to crafting the record wall, and it was a fairly easy process.

I measured the wall to determine how many records I could comfortably fit in the space and purchased supplies. After changing my mind from dark brown stained shelves to black, I spray painted the silver L brackets and screws black. I bought five 1”x2”x8’ boards and trimmed them down with a miter saw to fit seven 12” albums with about one centimeter spacing between each.

Installation began with a stud finder, a yard stick, a cordless drill, screws, and brackets. Since there wouldn’t be too much weight on the shelves, I only used one screw for the wall and one screw for the shelf. The intention was to allow for adjustments if necessary to ensure everything was even. I mounted the shelves on the inside of the brackets and secured them from the bottom. The process, rinsed and repeated until reaching the floor, resulted in the record wall seen below.