Build This: Open Shelving

I have been dying to redo my kitchen, I mean with all of the Pinterest inspiration who wouldnt?! But we aren't planning on staying in our house for much longer so it isnt really practical for us to put the money into a complete overhaul. Craig and I tend to be the king and queen of compromise, so we were able to come up with a pretty simple and inexpensive alternative. We took out one of our cabinets and put up some inexpensive shelving to show off our pretty dishes and vintage canisters. Here's the step by step on what we did....

Step 1: Take Off Existing Cabinet

One of the major differences between me and Craig is that he is the kind of person who so politely takes the cabinet off the wall with out damaging it just in case the next home owner wants to put it back up; and I showed up in the kitchen with a hammer and protective eye wear ready to demo this sucker. No go. 

Step 2: Spackel

You will more than likely have holes in the wall that you'll need to patch up when you remove your current cabinet. We had many.  We used the fancy kind of spackel that starts out purple and turns white when you're ready to paint  - Speaking of painting...we had to paint the wall where the cabinet was. You may or may not need to do this depending on if you've painted your kitchen already. 

Step 3: Measure

Before you do anything else you'll need to measure out where your brackets are going to be, and make sure that they'll be level. Look at those mad leveling skills up there! Craigy let me do this part. 

Step 4: Paint Shelves

I, luckily, had extra paint from when we painted our cabinets before. I was thinking about staining these, but wanted the kitchen to be uniform so we painted.  

*Tip: If you go to Home Depot you can pick out your wood and they'll cut it to the exact measurements for free. Whoop! That saved us a lot of time. 

Step 5: Hang those suckers

I usually put more holes in the wall than necessary when I try to hang things, and since we worked so hard on our spackeling already Craig thought it was best to take on this part. Okay, lets be honest...this is really a Craig DIY, its cool. We decided to use 3 brackets instead of 2 for extra support, and I am really happy with how it turned out.Next: Decorate

I used pretty bowls, vintage canisters, and some of my favorite cook books. I planted herbs in the canitsters - I can't wait for them to start growing!
I am so happy with how my shelving turned out - It is exactly what I wanted.