Really Easy Shelves to Display Records (spoiler: it’s crown moulding)

I’ve hauled a collection of records from our home state of Michigan, to Chicago, then across the country to Los Angeles. And I have NO idea how in all these years I have never had an easy, cheap way to display a few.

Yeah, I’ve tried record frames, but was not in love with them (plus they tend to run $10 a pop, which is kind of steep for a basic 12×12 frame), and they make it difficult to constantly rotate which records we want to display. Walking around Lowe’s a couple of weeks ago, we grabbed some shallow decorative moulding, thinking we might use it to hold some LEGO minifigures. Instead, this came about:

What do you think? We cut the sides on a slight angle to dress them up a bit, and put a thin line of silicone caulk on the “shelf” part, to give some grip for the records. You could instead try double sided tape or rug grip tape. The moulding is just hung with basic finishing nails, covered with a tiny dab of white acrylic paint to hide the nail head. We might eventually paint them some “hey-look-at-me!” color, but for now we wanted the records to stand out more.

I’d love to also point out the badass record player cabinet that we found on the side of the road! It was in BAD shape back then (no back, one side falling off, nothing inside working or fixable, scratched up and filthy… just bad). Our awesome roommate/best friend Corey re-did the entire thing, sanding, staining, patching, sealing the outside and completely gutting the interior.

He had to patch and re-attach the legs, which were barely hanging on when we found it. After pulling out all of the non-working guts (there were no speakers, just the remnants of a record player and a radio missing most of the parts), he built in a box to hold some of our most often played records. (Yes, Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. Don’t judge. It’s the best record ever for D&D night.)

For some reason, no standard record player would fit correctly in the cabinet (or “Space Age Stereo” as the sticker says), but Corey managed to find a small portable turntable on sale on Amazon that works/fits perfectly. Plus it has a cassette player, so there’s that.

The turntable is plugged into USB powered speakers, which are mounted underneath the cabinet. We thought the record shelves would make a nice little crown for the record cabinet.