Open Shelving Adventure

Not long after we moved in to the new house we decided to get rid of the upper kitchen cabinets and try something new. As always, we were super slow with the process so our kitchen ended up looking like this for a while until we saved up the money for the supplies we needed.

To draw the eye upward with vertical lines (and because it's pretty) we decided to use bead board behind our open shelving area.

We (Dave) put wood strips on the walls and screwed them into the studs. That way we could place our brackets where we wanted and screw them into the wood. Otherwise we would be limited to mounting them at the odd stud locations.

We looked around at shelf brackets but didn't find anything we really liked. It was also hard to find anything under around $6.00, and we were working on a tight budget. I showed Dave a photo of the look I liked and he thought he could re-create it. He made a jig (he'll have to post on how to do this) and ended up making our brackets for under $1.50 each. I love this man.

I also love the herb nesting crates that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. We, of course, got that idea from The Lettered Cottage.

...and here is the somewhat finished product.

We painted the lower cabinets black and took the doors off to re-style them. I will post on that soon!