Decorating Kitchen Shelves: a house log

Remember yesterday when our shelves looked like this?

Well, then I had lively doing this (if you are at work, you can watch this without sound and totally get the gist):

If you check out the video you can see that I can in fact reach everything up on those top shelves except for the stuff in the corner by the window, but it is straightforward sufficient to sit on the counter to grab it.

Who knew I’d be able to reach all that stuff? I totally expected to have to scream “Joooooohn” whenever I needed something up there (he’s the chef of the family so that likely would not have happened quite frequently anyway). Or use a step stool if he’s missing/outside/hiding and I am truly desperate. Haha.

So now our shelves are chock full o’ stuff, and are most certainly still a work in progress, but mighty cheerful and functional all the same…

It is not necessarily where things will stay – simply a first pass for sure. I in fact have since re-stacked some of the bowls – and plates & dishes have gotten used so things are constantly changing. It truly is a fully rotating display. The funny thing is that it is kind of crazy to “perfectly style” kitchen shelves anyway since it is all supposed to be used and is consistently being picked up or washed or put back so I have already declared that I WILL NOT BE CRAZY. And John is holding me to it. Hah. So since nothing is glued down or expected to remain exactly where I placed it OR ELSE, consider this to be simply one “take” of many when it comes to our open shelves. I am sure ceramic animals will worm their way in there somewhere. And I am sure as we add crown molding and patch the ceiling (at which point everything has to come back down from the shelves) things might get switched up. But that is half the lively when you are me.

As you can see from the video, I did not give anything too much thought. Sometimes over-thinking can be the bane of your existence when you are loading up shelves or a bookcase. So it was all sort of first-thought. So for anyone wondering about my method… I in fact consciously tried not to think too much and simply moved stuff around and stepped back and tried to focus on what I hoped to be easiest to grab and grouping things that made sense (like all the items for setting the dinner table and dessert stuff). I am sure it’ll evolve and change – and most likely get better and more functional – over time. Here is hoping, anyway! And you know I will take pictures. Plenty and plenty of pictures.

Oh and you can see from the shot above how shallow the brackets are and how deep our 12″ shelves are, so there is plenty of room for stuff and the brackets do not interfere with storage or anything. Whew.

But back to filling up those shelves. I tried hard not to think too hard (say that three times fast) but I did think about one thing the whole time I was at it: function. For example, I put our dessert bowls and dessert plates on the bottom right shelf and all of our large dinner dishes and cups and cereal bowls on the bottom left shelf. So those are closest at hand (and simply a step or two away from the dishwasher with no cabinet doors to open, so that should be fairly convenient). Then the top shelves got things that we may use less frequently, but that still might sit out on counters in a kitchen anyway (ex: a cute cake stand, some bigger serving bowls, a vase, a bottle of my mom’s go-to bubbly drink, etc). We figure that even when those items sit in cabinets for a while they can get dusty, so it should be the same difference (a swift rinse and they are ready to go). We will keep you posted on how it all works for sure.

Here is how the room now looks from the office doorway. Such a difference. Although the not-stainless dishwasher still kills us, but soon sufficient we should have the new one installed. Oh and I meant to take a shot of the window straight on to show the balance of the shelves that are spaced 14″ from the right of it and the cabinet that is spaced 14″ to the left of it… but I had a brain fart. Epic picture-taking fail. So that shot’s to come.

Memory lane time? Sure. The room used to look like this from the office doorway. Kinda crazy, right? I am totally standing in the exact same spot – not any closer (see the counter cutting off at the bottom of each picture at nearly the same spot?). Is not it crazy how much closer the window feels in the picture below?

But let us get back to the present. Do you hear a harp softly playing in the background or is it simply me? Picture me twirling around with my arms out while orchestral music swells and birds come and fly around me holding ribbons in their beaks. Only less graceful and more awkward. And perhaps the birds are simply Burger and Clara holding toilet paper and spinning around beside me while I grin up at the can lights.

Oh and someone pointed out that we have plenty of subtle curves going on with our brackets and our round penny tile and our round pendants. I enjoy glad accidents like that! With more angular things like the range hood and the peninsula, it is pleasant to have some softer shapes to complement them. High five for glad accidents.

Now that we have our fairly glass cups out in front of the boring clear ones we in fact use them more. And I get to stare at them. Wait, that sounds creepy. I get to gaze at them. Better?

We think the random pops of blue, green, and yellow along with those two frames I stuck up there are lively. It is certainly not a “magazine after” or anything – more like a gathering of all the stuff we in fact use with some fairly decorative things tossed in there for lively. If a magazine blew in I think they’d likely add “more fairly” (flowers, lacquered boxes, candlesticks, etc) in exchange for “less function” (translation: I would enjoy it and John would roll his eyes and say “um, where are all our plates and bowls and cups?”).

Oh and a bunch of folks asked if we considered a third row of shelves up top, but we figured once we loaded up those second shelves the stuff on them would balance with the top of the doorway, so anything above that might have been too heavy/cluttered for us. Plus that stuff would be truly hard to reach/use.

And as for where we put the brackets, we hoped them all to be equally spaced on both sides (we looked at three on the left side but they did not feel as balanced with the ones on the right as four of them did). And that preferred layout thankfully worked with our studs (nearly all of our screws aligned perfectly and they feel truly strong!), so after looking at a few distinct hanging options/bracket placements (and taping things off to assist picture them) we simply pulled the trigger and went with our go-to – which we thankfully enjoy simply as much in real life!

In short: we are so quite glad with our wall o’ tile complete with glorious bracketed shelves full of sunshine and rainbows. Literally, the art in fact says “Enjoy Life” (it was the cover of a book that John got me, which I framed) and “Squeeze The Day” (a go-to flier from an old Boden catalog that came in the mail). We know open shelves (or these brackets/wall color/tile/pendants/stools/accessories) might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we dig it. And the whole photography crew for the book is being quite cute about stroking and gazing right along with us (full disclosure: this is one of those things that looks better in person, and even the video fully fails to capture it) so you will all simply have to come over when we are done with all of the crazy book chaos. Haha. You can even pour yourself a drink since you know where we keep the cups…

In other news: oh glad day – the tulips are still alive! I keep meaning to drop a penny in the water while Clara’s around so we can watch them perk up. Thanks for all the flower pointers folks!

Here is another shot sans crown molding and a patched ceiling. Oh and there will soon be a pendant hanging down over the sink too. We are trying to tackle that, simply so we do not have to stare at torn up ceilings for much longer. So yes, it is certainly a work in progress, but we are jazz-hands-crazy about how our little “refurbished” kitchen is shaping up. And we are certainly even more impatient than you folks about the cork floors! Cannot wait to get there and call this turkey done. Hah.

And simply because I am nuts, here is what I did while playing around in photoshop.

Flat brown paint dumped on the “floor” via photoshop hardly captures all the remarkable texture that our marbled cork floors will bring, and the white paint dumped to replicate crown molding hardly looks real (nor does my crazy little made-up pendant over the sink, which will likely be a lot lighter looking and made of clear glass) but it was lively. And if you squint and hum the Dexter theme song, you can almoooooost see it (sidenote: John changed his ringtone from Dexter to the Parks & Recreation song, which saddened me for a nanosecond and then I realized how hilarious the Parks & Rec song is – we even set it to be our alarm tone too, simply because it makes waking up extra early for book stuff nearly pleasurable tolerable).

So spill it. Who is fully surprised that 5’2″ me can reach nearly everything on those upper shelves? That was a total unexpected bonus. Oh and for those wondering why there is not a crew of lovely book photoshoot people wandering in and out of the time lapse video, they have to set up lights for certain shots that take a while so they were shooting in the back bedrooms (and I gave them one of those “I will be back in thirty minutes, so hold tight and scream if you need me” things). Thankfully only John wandered in for a sec, so there were no photoshoot emergencies in the middle of my shelf-y lively (I even ducked out to answer some comment questions and take a call about our upcoming Portland gig). So as Martha would say, that is a good thing. In summary: yay shelves. What have you folks been hanging/filling up with plates and bowls/filming in time lapse lately?

Psst- And now for a post about donuts.

UPDATE: We could not enjoy our open cabinets more. Check out a bracket tweak that we made here and an update post about how they function here here.