I made the shelf below for the mother of a friend.  She asked me to make it after seeing some cheap imported imitation in a magazine.  Today, she has some knickknacks and curtains on it.  She liked it so much that she had me make another one for her daughter-in-law's birthday.  After she snuck in to take the measurements, I made it, but she hadn't realized that when they put the sliding door in that house, the wall wasn't thick enough for the door.  As a result, they had to put additional molding on the existing molding.  In other words, when they put the shelf up, the molding that came out 2 inches, made the curtain rod useless because the shelf only came out 3/4 of an inch.  So my friend's mother and I snuck in again to steal the shelf. I took it home and shimmed it up with another 1.25 inches and tried to make it look like it was meant to come 2 inches off the wall.  That is in the final photo below.

 

 

 

 

I made this at the request of my friend's little boy.  He was reading Harry Potter and wanted a magic wand.  So I made him a custom HP- PFS 3000, which means Harry Potter Phoenix Feather Special 3000.  I made it out of a piece of scrap Bolivian Rosewood molding that I had used on a Headboard that I made for my aunt a few years back- nothing like a big scrap pile of cool woods.  This thing will zap the warts of a toad's ass at 100 yards. Magic's not included though.