Kitchen DIY Update

Exposed Shelves

It’s funny how much you end up like your parents and your surroundings. Growing up, my mom was always into interior design and having a pretty home. Ever since I can remember, we would spend time at fabric stores, furniture stores because she was redecorating the house, or walking through models to get some design inspiration. Now that I have my own home, it’s funny to see how much of that translated into my life now. I’m just like my mama. I love design, decorating our home, strolling through home goods for hours, and just making a house a home.

The latest update in our house has been a fun little DIY Kitchen project. We had two big empty walls in our kitchen that needed to be filled. I LOVE the look and concept of an exposed shelf in a kitchen. We weren’t going to get rid of our cabinets in the kitchen, so I decided we could just put some shelves on one of the empty walls next to our pantry.

Materials

After putting a shelf up in our family room, I already knew what I needed to get. We went to Home Depot and got some wood cut, bought black brackets and that’s it! This project doesn’t cost a lot of money and requires very little material to do it and makes such a difference. The only part that takes a little time is measuring where they should go and how far apart you want them.

Tip: Make sure to put anchors in the wall when drilling them in because you’re going to be putting some weight on the shelves and you want to be sure that they won’t collapse after you put all your bowls etc. on top. 

Personalize It

What I find so fun about exposed shelving is that you can personalize it and it’s a reflection of your style. You can put items on the shelf that you use everyday like sugar, olive oil, breakfast bowls, etc. I wanted to make sure I showcased my fun bowls that are striped from Williams Sonoma, along with my coffee mugs from Crate and Barrel. I wanted to add another element to the shelf that wasn’t kitchen basics, so I went to Target and purchased this adorable pitcher from Magnolia. I love the stripes and orange rim on the bottom and added some faux flowers to put inside it and put it on the top shelf for some added height.

After putting up the shelves, I realized that there was an empty space between the floor and shelf that needed to be filled. I could either get a small bar cart for storage or add hooks to hang an apron, mitts, etc. After my mom sent me a photo of a kitchen that had the hooks, I was set on putting hooks. I think the hooks tie the whole corner together. It just makes sense and filled in the space nicely. I bought the robe hooks from Home Depot and also did matte black to match the brackets.

The wall adjacent to the shelves also needed to be filled. When we first moved into our home, I put a calendar on that wall. It did the job for a little while, until I was the only one using the calendar. When we were in Italy for our honeymoon, we purchased two recipe prints that are in Italian that I knew I wanted in our kitchen.

We got the classics – Margherita pizza and a Caprese salad. The prints were an odd shape so I couldn’t just purchase any frame for them. I took them to our local Michael’s store and had them framed with black frames to match all the hardware.

When it comes to rugs, the rugs in our house are all boho inspired. The rug in our dining room is a mix of colors, but mostly blue so when I stumbled upon this one at Home Goods, I had to have it. Our kitchen is an alley way kitchen, so a runner in the kitchen makes sense and this rug compliments the one in the dining room and ties both spaces together.

I’m in love with this new cute little nook in our home and I love that Devin and I were able to do it together. Pretty things make me happy and DIY home projects make me even happier.

xx Raquel