Hanging Ikea Floating Shelves In The Kitchen

Let us take some shelfies. You know, as opposed to selfies.

If only we had Beyonce around to photobomb them, they’d be the best shelfies ever…

The no-Beyonce consolation prize is that we at last got the Ikea floating shelves up in the kitchen, and it suddenly feels like we are turning a corner. We still have a few major things on the list (like painting those cabinets) but the shelves make such a gigantic difference as opposed to the dark cabinetry that used to hang on either side of that window. Here is how it looked a few weeks ago after we took out the wallpaper.

And here it is from the same POV now, after removing the cabinets, re-hanging the crown molding, patching/priming/painting the walls, trim, and ceilings, upgrading the lighting, and hanging those new shelves of ours. These pictures do not even do it justice – it is literally at least twice as bright and feels a lot bigger and more open as well.

When it comes to how we hung them (they are lack shelves from Ikea), we chose to line the bottom shelf up with the cabinet on the left of the shot above (18″ above the counter) so that they all related to one another. The pre-made sizes allowed for a couple inches of breathing room around the window too, which we liked anyways. We simply spaced the height of the second shelf by eye and chose 14″ above the other shelf, which gave us sufficient room to load up the bottom shelf without things feeling cramped, but also allows a shorty like me to easily reach items on that top shelf.

As for in fact hanging them, we held up the bottom shelf in place and made sure it was level…

… before marking the top corners on each side and drawing a line across the top, like you see below.

These longer shelves come with a metal hanging brace and screw, so when you open things up, this is what you are dealing with.

The metal brace is in fact fairly smart. It has a bunch of holes all along it so you can simply find a stud (we used a basic stud finder) and screw into at least two of those along the span of the shelf, so you know it is extra secure. The instructions show a few recommended screw-to-stud placements.

Next I placed the brace along the horizontal area where we hoped to hang the shelf. I simply measured in a few inches on each side from our little pencil corner guides since the metal brace does not run as long as the shelves themselves) and I used one screw into the drywall right in the middle, simply to hold the brace in place.

That freed up my hands so I could use the stud finder to find the actual studs, and drive two more pleasant long screws (provided with the shelves) into the studs on that wall, so it was held up truly strongly (John aided me by holding the level to be sure it did not tweak up or down on a certain side as I went).

There are these little metal plates that you use when you drive the screw into the stud (they are sort of like washers, they go under the screw and hold the brace even more firmly than a screw alone could), so those three metal rectangles that you see below are where two went into studs (we also brought in one more with an anchor for even more holding power).

Then you simply slide the shelf onto the brace and tighten the three provided screws that go into the three pre-drilled holes in the shelves. At first I did it by hand, all allen-wrench-style. That was for the birds (took a million years)…

… so I broke out the power drill to drive those in a lot faster.

We repeated that process for the higher shelf, and when it came to the little side shelves, those were truly straightforward. We simply used heavy duty anchors driven into the pre-selected spots on the wall that aligned with where we hoped to hang each shelf. As opposed to the longer shelves, which are screwed into place fairly firmly in three places each, these can also be popped on and off easily, which is excellent because we will temporarily remove these folks when it is cabinet painting time.

They’ve been truly sturdy so far. The stronger the anchor you use, the more stable your shelves will be – and of course if they are not placed perfectly level into the wall, they might wobble. So be sure to measure at least twice and break out that level for the best result. I think as the room evolves, the items on each shelf will too (for example, I might hang a small framed photo above that stack of plates on the wall, or place something taller on that bottom shelf for some lively color/height).

But for now they are especially functional – I simply filled the bottom ones with the stuff we use all the time, and the top ones with items we simply enjoy to see. For example, things I might leave out on the counter to be decorative (like a potted plant or a pitcher-turned-vase) along with other items we use a lot that did not quite fit onto those bottom shelves (like more plates and mugs).

Here they are from the other angle. Oh man, it is so much faster to unload the dishwasher again (we seriously missed that perk of open shelving from our last house) and we enjoy that although they flank the window on each side, they do not truly block any light since they are shiny and white (they bounce light around a lot themselves) and they are not dark and solid like the old cabinets were.

Update: These longer shelves should each be able to hold 33 lbs according to Ikea if you go into studs (we went into two of them), and so far ours have been truly strong no matter how much china we throw at them put on them. Giant upper cabinets full of dishes are held up the same way (screws into studs) so that certainly helps to ease our mind, along with the fact that we had good luck with the same type of Lack shelves in the dining area of our first house for 4+ years.

It is certainly a far cry from the room that we began with around 6 months ago…

… and we are crazy excited to lighten up those upper cabinets and go even deeper/richer with the lower cabinets. We have never had a tuxedo kitchen, but we have been such large fans for a long time (simply look at how vivid this one is). In fact we are sanding and priming this week, so we hope to have a whole “new” kitchen for 2014!

Was anyone else doing last minute home projects this weekend in anticipation of the holidays? Do you have any big projects planned this week? We seem to have a tradition of doing something big and house-interrupting right in the middle of the Christmas craziness…

Psst- We are taking more quizzes on the house Life. And this one was crazy accurate!