so i mentioned a while back that on our list of kitchen to-do's is adding storage space to our teeny-tiny kitchen by putting up a shelf. it took us a while, and we definitely took the long way around to get there, but now we can finally cross it off the list!
technically this project got started the weekend that my sister Abi came to visit. as a part of our IKEA run that we managed to squeeze in between all the other craziness we crammed into that weekend, i picked up a shelf that i had been contemplating for a little while. its a GRUNDTAL (dont ask me to pronounce it) and i think i like it so much because its the same kind that my mom got for her kitchen at our old house.
before we could hang the shelf, we had to wait until the painting was all done, which i mentioned wrapped up two weekends ago. what i didnt mention at that time was that we immediately wanted to hang the shelf, so on Sunday night after my birthday party with the fam, that's what we set out to do.
we decided on where we wanted the shelf to hang by having Mark hold it up and me stand back and make sure that it looked good and wouldnt be in the way of the fridge or the cabinets above the fridge, or people walking through the doorway. we marked our preferred location with pencil on some painters tape. (a trick we learned from Vanilla Ice of all people, so we werent marking directly on the walls)
well apparently, sometimes if you happen to be super strong and you put too much pressure onto a drywall anchor while attempting to attach a shelf to your wall, you can wind up pushing the whole setup (screw and anchor) straight through the drywall.
womp-womp. (there are no pictures of the holes, they were just too sad)
we had to fix this, otherwise we would not have a shelf, and that was the ultimate goal, after all. failure was not an option. so we had to open up the wall. yay for more drywall work! Mark cut an opening between the two studs where we had punched the holes. he stayed away from the corner, because that would have been a tough space to try and fix after the fact.
from this point on, things went smoothly. but we really didnt want to wait forever for the entire recommended time that it would take multiple coats of fairly thick spackle that we needed to fill the gaps to dry. so we bought a little fan. (we also got a memory card for my new camera when we got the fan. new camera pics for the win!) we wanted to set the fan up as closely to the wall as possible. which meant we needed to be a little creative.
yes. really.
thanks to our fan-tastic setup, the spackle was all ready to be sanded last night, AND two coats of paint went up and dried in no time flat. since we still had the original holes for the left bracket in the wall, we just had to line up the shelf, make sure it was level, mark and drill the holes for the right bracket, and attach this sucker to the wall. piece of cake.
i love this shelf. the stainless steel matches the pulls that are on our cabinets and drawers, and surprisingly enough it doesnt really make the space feel any smaller, because it just occupies an area of the kitchen that was previously just dead space.
the goal for the shelf is that is will hold some of the pots and pans that we use fairly regularly that currently reside in the clown-car that is our corner cabinet. its amazing the amount of stuff that can fit in that space, but its a pain in the butt to try and get anything through the tiny cabinet door. so hopefully with a little reorganization this shelf will be outfitted with all sorts of goodies and Mark can stop cringing every time he thinks about having to put away the clean pots and pans.
still on the to-do list:
- swap out all the electrical outlets, switches, and the random phone jack.
- fresh coat of paint on the cabinets and drawers.
- re-hang the light fixture.
- decide on something to do with the fake wall next to the fridge.
- move all our kitchen stuff out of the nook and back into the kitchen.
so there you have it. one step closer to having our kitchen back and fully functional!
4 comments:
Your husband is a home repair genius. (I was going to say a home repair stud, but it did not seem appropriate for his MIL to make that comment.) Love the shelf by the way.
-an especially poor choice of words taking into account the title Miss Brenda ;) Love you both... the shelf looks great! but where is your wall clock?
i almost asked 'what wall clock?' and then i remembered that we left that tabletop in the store...
This was a lovely bit of humor to my evening. An adventure that we would have had, but then instead of being able to fix the wall, we would have had to figure out what huge household item we could use to cover up the hole. No skillz here in the dry wall department.
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