Floating Shelves

I still remember the first day that we toured this home and I walked into the kitchen clinching my teeth and thinking… yickes, this kitchen needs a lot of work! For a couple that loves to cook, and eat, and entertain, this was a bit of a heart-break kitchen.

This meant one thing, if this was the house we wanted to call our home, we would need to make some big changes on a pretty tight budget.

After weighing the pros and cons of this house, we were confident more pros outweighed the not great kitchen. We were ready to move forward and take on the challenge of updating this space on a tight budget. And you guessed it, open shelving was on the top of my list!

As much I wanted new cabinets, it just wasn’t going to be an option for us at this time. We were told new custom cabinets for our small kitchen could run between $9, 000 – $12,000. Instead, we opted to tear out the top cabinets and paint the base cabinets.

Ripping out the top cabinets and replacing them with floating shelves took the a lot of convincing and negotiating on my end!  The phrase “you can’t go back if it doesn’t work out” was repeated numerous times by a number of people when I pitched the idea. Jake and my dad were both pretty skeptical to say the least. BUT, I was very sure that I did not want these cabinets. And I was very sure we did not have $12,000 to buy new cabinets.

So only hours after closing on our house, Jake and my dad ripped out the top cabinets… and I did a long happy dance around the house. I was beyond excited to say goodbye to these orange oak bombs.

Since we were working on a crazy-tight-timeline everything had to be completed really fast. That same week, we spent an afternoon picking out lumber and making the shelves at my parents farm. It turned out to be a really fun project for us and it went quicker than we thought.

I LOVE how these shelves turned out! They aren’t perfect but I love their imperfections because I remember every giggle and “oops” that went along with the small mistake. I also love that these shelves force us to keep only our favorite mugs and dishes. With no cupboards to hide our college coffee cups, we had to purge a lot. And it feels so good to be free of clutter in one of our main living spaces.

If anyone is considering building floating shelves, I highly recommend checking out @Shanty2chic Floating Shelves Tutorial. I found it really helpful that they provide a material list and a visual cut list. I do, however, recognize I am fortunate to have a dad who has a massive workshop and every tool you can imagine, BUT I am pretty certain anyone could do these with a few tools and only a little experience with woodwork.

I’d love to hear if anyone has tried making floating shelves or plans to tackle a kitchen update!!