Kitchen Update: Shelving

When we first bought our house, there were these funny little glass shelves in our kitchen.  Mostly they collected junk and dust, and because they were glass I was scared to put my cookbooks on them.  I also broke one during the home inspection.  Whoops!

These just don't say "pile books on me"

To make this area more functional, we decided to put in sturdier shelving.

We kept the adjustable sides and corresponding brackets, and simply cut pieces to length.  What we ended up using for the MDF was a closet shelf.  At $13 each, and no paint necessary, cutting a shelf seemed like a wonderful idea.

To keep the MDF from splintering, we wrapped the cut line in tape.  It helped some, but there was still some splintering.  No biggie though - with all my cookbooks loaded on you wouldn't be able to see the cut edges anyways!

Tommy loves helping on projects where he gets to use power tools!

We slipped the new shelves in and loaded them up!

Now the little space is much more functional, and I have my cookbooks within easy reach.

I was a little worried about the sunlight from the windows ruining the color on the covers, and then I decided not to care about it.  The insides are the best part anyways!

All in all, this project was $26 - just the cost of the two shelves we cut up.  Everything else we already had!  The five cuts were crazy easy.  Definitely a project I would do again!

Kitchen Storage Love!

You might also be interested in these posts:
Granola Bar Word Art
Kitchen Blinds
Painting the Kitchen
Binder Cookbook

Bonnie Projects

What's Up Granola Bar?

Weird title?  Not to me!  When Tommy and I first started dating, I was the "crunchiest" person he knew - mainly because I recycled regularly and liked to pick my own blueberries from local farms.

"Crunchy granola" led to "granola bar", and he adopted the nickname for me.  Every time he'd call me, he'd open with, "What's up, granola bar?"

I loved it!  In fact, I was so smitten that three years later I married him.

Fast forward to present day, and I've been wanting to hang a piece of art in the kitchen.  Photographs seem weird in our kitchen, and none of our current art seems to fit the space, so I started considering typography.  Typography is essentially words written pretty and used as art (not the real definition, but how I'm using it here).

Granola bars are food, and food comes from the kitchen, so the idea of framing "what's up granola bar?" seemed like a fun idea.

I typed some stuff up, added lots of fun color, and threw it in an IKEA frame.

Tommy hated it.

He had in mind a more loopy font - one that at first glance wouldn't look like words.  He was also in favor of a single color.  He has pretty good taste, so I trusted him on this one.

I went back to the drawing board (i.e., powerpoint).  I downloaded about a dozen loopy fonts, and tried them all our with the text.  The winner was a font called Roskrift Clean.

Regular ol' computer paper looked junky once framed, so I used some higher-quality paper left over from when we made our wedding booklets.

I loved it on the first print-out, so I put it in the IKEA frame and hung it up.  Perfect!

Some of our visitors don't get it, but that's OK with me.  99% of days, we're the only ones who see it, and it makes us happy to remember those early days of our courtship.

If you count my time searching for fonts, this project took about two hours.  If you already have cute fonts, it would take about 15 minutes.  The paper and ink were essentially free, and the frame was $10.  So for $10 and two hours, I have new art in the kitchen that makes me smile.  Sounds like a good project to me :)

PS: Does anyone know why IKEA makes a white frame with an off-white mat inside?  It bugs me a little to have different whites next to each other, so I'm considering taking some water colors to the mat.  Think it would help?

Bonnie Projects

Kitchen Update: Plantation Blinds

After four months of having our kitchen wide open to the public (you know, after we tore out the existing blinds without a plan for replacement), we can finally get a little privacy!  It had gotten so bad that Tommy was cooking in the dark just so the neighbors wouldn't look at him at night.

I had big plans to make roman shades for the kitchen, but for a variety of reasons I'll cover in an upcoming FAIL post, they didn't work out.

Our backup plan was to order plantation blinds.  We tried Next Day Blinds, but they wanted $450 for two windows.  Um, no.  I had used Just Blinds for my condo, and have been happy with those.  Upon further investigation, I was also quite happy with the $150 price tag.  66% less?  I'll take it!

I wanted to mount the blinds inside the windows, but they're not set back - they're flush with the wall, so that was a nonstarter.  Then I wanted to hang them from the wall above the window so as not to drill holes into our brand new trim.  But if they were attached to the wall, they wouldn't hang out far enough to clear the trim.

Finally we decided to just attach them straight to the trim.  Rather, through the trim.  I wasn't confident the trim was hung securely, so we used 2.5" screws to go through the trim and into the studs.

My own stud did all the heavy lifting and usage of power tools.  I got to take photos and hand him stuff!

They definitely took longer than the promised 25 min. each to hang, but that was due to a special circumstance.  Our pretty new trim isn't flat!  And if you screw things onto it, they flop over at an angle.  Some well-placed shims got everything back on track, but it took a few attempts to get there.

And now we have blinds!

After four months of waiting and two hours of labor, we are smitten!  They make the kitchen feel like a finished room.  The clean simpleness of them meshes well with the rest of the house.  And now I can make coffee in my pajamas!

One more before and after, and a deep sigh of satisfaction :)

Bonnie Projects

Kitchen Update: Paint

I feel like we're finally making good progress getting our house to be more "us".  The main floor of our house, where the kitchen, dining room, and living room are, has been getting lots of love lately.  We love the results so much that we've been hosting much more than we used to.  I think now that it feels like our house, we're more comfortable inviting friends and family over.

When we moved in, we had a perfectly nice, though very Tuscan, kitchen!

The floors, appliances, cabinets, and counters were all in great shape, so it seemed silly and wasteful to replace them, even if they aren't exactly what we would choose if we were starting from scratch.  We decided to keep those big-ticket items, and work with and around them to achieve a more contemporary-looking kitchen.

The drapes came down the day we closed on the house.  I guess we're just not foofy-drapes kind of people.  I'm sure whoever bought them at Goodwill will give them the loving home they deserve.

Next up, the wallpaper.  Very high-quality, but very Tuscan.  And it kind of reminded me of camouflage.  It wasn't right for us, so it had to go.  Those same loving friends who ripped the wallpaper out of the foyer and half-bath did our kitchen, too!  Thank you Aliya and Eric!!!

And just like in those other rooms, a veritable mountain of glue was lurking behind the paper.  We scrubbed and scraped until our fingers were raw, and finally got that mess off.  Ugh, if I didn't detest wallpaper before, I sure do now!!!

Anyways.

Things were definitely looking up post-wallpaper!

We discovered that for the blinds to operate in the windows, the previous owners had removed the top piece of molding from the windows.  Without those foofy curtains, it was really obvious and pretty hideous. 

We hired a guy to replace the moldings - the news ones are thicker, with squared edges and a sill, and they look fabulous!

The walls got a good dose of sanding, putty, sanding, putty, sanding, more sanding, and finally some primer and paint!  Here's where things start looking better rather than worse!

We really hemmed and hawed over paint colors.  We wanted to subdue the orangeyness of the cabinets while keeping things light and bright, but not too bright.  I used Sherwin Williams color visualizer to go through a number of shades, but I still couldn't choose.  Eventually we just got about 1000 paint chips, pinned them up, and slowly took down any that weren't working.

Grey has been super popular lately, and it actually looked pretty good in the kitchen.  The granite has large blobs of silver in it, so we chose a color that coordinates with the granite.

I painted the walls with Sherwin Williams' Emerald brand paint, in March Wind.  I know I always say it, but I still believe it: I love Emerald Paint!!!  It covers like nothing else, is VOC-free, and is just plain fabulous.  I really can't impress upon you how important decent paint can be!  Now that I know quality paint, I'm never going back.

We're finding that since we don't have a tiled backsplash, stuff gets on the painted walls now and again.  Not a problem, I just wipe it off!  Love that paint!

So here we are, time for the reveal!

They grey turned out so great!  It's made the space feel much more clean and contemporary.

OK, one more before and after, just for fun.

Along the way, we removed the orangey wood blinds (and are hoping a neighbor with the same windows wants them).  We're kind of showing the kitchen to the world right now, so I've been busy putting together new window coverings!  Stay tuned :)