I had an alcove in my dining room that was dead space, and it was too shallow to put a piece of furniture there because it would encroach on the doorway entrance to the room.  So I decided to instead install some shelves.  

I used some 1" thick pieces of melamine - they were actually faulty desktops at my place of work - the holes were drilled in the wrong place for the desk frames, so the supplier replaced them with new ones so these were all going to be disposed of, and I asked if I could take them home.  

I had lots of offcuts of sapele, oak and teak from the recent dining table build.  They were cluttering up the workshop so I wanted to put them to good use.  

I used the thickness planer to get all of the pieces to a consistent size and to ensure they were all flat.  Then I glued and clamped the pieces together with wood glue.  

When the glue had set, I used a handplane to flatten the laminated workpiece.  

In this video I make a chopping board from some salvaged oak hat and coat stands

Here's a little shelf I made in an alcove next to my bedroom.  The shelf sits on top of some brackets that sit on top of the radiator so there are no fixings in to the wall.