open shelves in the kitchen and other random fears

Remember this empty corner in my new kitchen nook area?

Well after my Dad left I found some pieces of wood on the side of the house that were leftover from our bookshelf project. I couldn't believe it. There were three pieces of pine --all the same length--that I rescued and decided to use for a few open shelves in this corner.

What's your opinion of open shelving in the kitchen?

Someday when we renovate I'll have to see how I feel about them but for now I thought why not?

 Turn out, I didn't even need to cut them.

After  I painted them I headed to Home Depot and bought six wood brackets and immediately called my Dad and asked him how in the world I was going to get three shelves put up in a straight line. "Straight" is hard for me---so I never do any actual nailing around here, I usually depend on my wonderful Dad do it...

but he just left.
And after staring at this wall I finally got fed up about being so nervous about this project and I decided to jump right into it.

Here's the side of the bracket that goes into the wall.

As you can see there are 2 molly bolts for each bracket.

 Doesn't this look hard? (That's my wimpy voice talking)

Actually I found out that it's not really hard, it just takes some careful measuring and a reliance on a level. Or in my case two levels.

Gotta keep checking these little bubbles.

After they were up I added some wood glue, chalked them and painted them the color of the wall.

And drum roll please......

My new open shelves

Voila! Here they are.
I still haven't decided how I want to style them but I love how they came out.

And wait. There's more. Do you know how one project leads to another?
Well once I got these shelves up all of a sudden my turquoise buffet really stuck out like a sore thumb. My mom has been asking me to paint it white for a while now and I decided she was right.
The only problem was I had never removed vintage hardware before.

Another little fear I got over.

Before

After

white buffet and new shelves

Do you have something in your life that you're nervous to tackle? If so, this post is for you.

I encourage you to challenge yourself.

It doesn't matter how small and seemingly insignificant it might be. In my case it involved a simple hammer and drill gun and yet, I had this view of myself that "I can't do that kinda stuff." 

I feel the same way about my computer. I've been dealing with some current computer issues that are affecting my blogging lately and even though I've always been intimidated by anything 'techie" I'm actually  learning a few new skills-- I'm talking very BASIC ones but hey, the point is that all of a sudden I'm walking around feeling more empowered.

I just got to a point where I was tired of having all these little fears.

Can you relate?

xo

Leslie

I'm sharing this post with friends:

 Share your cup

Savvy Southern Style