So I emptied the unit and scrubbed it and painted it. When we bought the house, the kitchen had red and yellow floral curtains and the back wall of the shelves was covered with a piece of the same fabric. One of the first things I did when we moved in was get rid of the fabric. Now, I felt that the plain white backing wasn't doing much for me. I tacked fabric scraps to the back of the shelves, but didn't achieve the Brunschwig & Fils look I was going for and I realized that fabric would just get greasy and gross over time. I had paint samples from when we painted the front hall, and after auditioning these on the back of the shelves, I chose Sherwin Williams' Copen Blue.
The cupboard at the bottom was under-utilized and messy. Jon added a shelf to maximize the space.
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Cupboard before |
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Cupboard after - finally a place to store dog treats. We used to have to stack the canned dog food on the floor. |
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Pantry wall before - the cookbook shelf was such a disaster |
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Pantry wall after. I am determined to prevent clutter from collecting on the bottom shelf where the cookbooks used to be. |
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Close up of the re-painted shelves |
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Close up of the shelves I built |
The final touch was new cabinet knobs. I disliked the featureless white knobs that came with the shelves. I browsed etsy for about fifteen minutes and selected these vintage blue glass knobs. Are they perfect? No, but they cost $6. If I find something perfect, I'll buy it then, but life is too short to spend hours dithering over cabinet knobs.
I realize this isn't an aspirational pinterest kitchen. My house is humble, but then I've never desired grandeur. Still, I am really happy with how this turned out. I love having all my baking supplies in one place and especially love having separate canisters for each type of flour. I also love my newly-organized cookbook shelf. The canned goods on the top shelf are a bit random, but I'm only putting frequently-used staples up there.
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I made good use of the label maker my kids gave me for Christmas |
In case anyone is interested, below are linked the earlier posts about this.