Welcome to the adventures of shelf install in the kitchen! This post was almost titled “How to break an easy, no-explanation-necessary project down into several illustrated steps.”

As you can see I’m not very good at taking actual [right] before pictures. The above left image of the sink is almost 4 years old (I can’t believe we’ve been here that long!), and the image on the right is about 2 years old. But, they both serve to illustrate the shelving issues in the kitchen. By the sink, there isn’t a convenient, sturdy place to store soap. When the dish rack gets full it’s impossible to reach soap all the way over on the little counter to the right. By the stove, the shelf installed by a previous tenant is useless—anything placed there gets covered in grease and out of reach. In order to keep things at hand, they have to occupy space on the tiny counter space to the left of the stove. In the new configuration, this space become usable as a working countertop.

We’re all breathing easier without the nasty “look-at-me!” brackets of the old shelf, aren’t we?

I started this project Halloween weekend, first shopping for lumber and a mahogany-colored stain to match the existing un-painted wood in the kitchen. While our neighbors were applying glitter to their fairy wings, I was staining pine planks out back. Fortunately I managed to avoid getting any glitter stuck in the wet stain. This was my first time staining anything by myself, so I did my homework. Step 1: ask a random man in the stain aisle (no, not a store employee) if one should use a regular paint brush. The man will surely tell you that you’d be better off using a rag. It is best to use a rag to which you have no great attachment. Later, you will throw this rag in the trash because it will be impossible to clean; according to the label on the little tin of stain, it could even spontaneously catch fire if not disposed of properly. Step 2: phone your father (any knowledgeable, experienced stainer in the family will do) and share an in-depth discussion on the application of stain with said rag. He will go into detail about the instructions on the side of the stain can, placing emphasis on the importance of removing excess stain and avoiding drips for fear of an uneven finish. Step 3: don a pair of latex gloves, or similar, and get cracking. Allow the wood to dry over night.

Now that the wood is dry and you are satisfied with the color, it’s time to get out the tool box. You’ll want to mount the L-brackets before attempting to attach the shelf to the wall, unless you happen to be an octopus. For the shelf above the sink, the positioning of the brackets was based on the edge of the sink itself and the edge of the small counter below. In the case of the shelf by the stove, the brackets are evenly spaced from the ends of the board. As you decide where to place your brackets, a measuring tape and a pencil will come in handy. You might even consider putting a T-square on your Christmas list if you are lacking one as I am, wink! I placed the brackets against each piece of wood on the floor and used the floor to make sure they’d be flush to the wall. This step is based on the assumption that the floor and the wall are actually level—in my apartment they are not, but it’s close enough. Once the brackets were in position, I used a set of bar clamps to hold them in place while drilling.

The most important part of drilling is making sure not to go through the boards. You spent a lot of time staining them, remember? As I learned from Rod, the easiest way to do this is to wrap a small piece of tape around your drill bit that indicates how deep you want the bit to sink.

With the brackets in place, it’s time to mount the shelf on the wall. You’ll need a level and your pencil again. Since I have only 2 hands (again, I’m a human—not an octopus), I don’t have any pictures of this part. Taking a tip from Anna of Door Sixteen, I painted out the bottom half of the brackets so the shelves would appear to float.

Now that the shelves are in place, it’s time to put them to work. Give them a purpose, make them feel wanted, and make sure they feel pretty. As I said, the main role for the shelf above the sink was to give us a solid place to store soap. But, as you can see in the above images, there’s room for a bit more than that. I read recently that all decorating is part function, part display. I was thinking 100% display with everything that came after the dishsoap, but it turns out this open storage is also highly functional. Tom and I are actually using these pieces now that they’re within arm’s reach. That, of course means our pretty bowls feel useful again and these shelves feel pretty useful—esteemed, even.

Special thanks to the man in the stain aisle, my father, and Tom for contributing a second set of hands.

Photo Credits: Left—Photography by David Land, styling by PJ Mehaffey, home of Michael Fusco and Emma Straub via Design*Sponge; Right—London designer Charles Mellersh, Photography by Chris Tubbs via Remodelista

Photo Credits: Left—The 10 Cent Designer; Right—Anna Beth Chao of Hashai/AB Chao

Photo Credits: Lori Andrews Interiors aka The 10 Cent Designer

Photo Credits: Anna Dorfman of Door Sixteen

Photo Credits: Anna Dorfman of Door Sixteen

Photo Credits: Left—Anna Dorfman of Door Sixteen; Right—Katja and Minna of Nestled in via Apartment Therapy

(see below for image, product sourcing)

After a long hiatus from working on projects around the apartment, I’m ready to shop get back to work. Fortunately, items 4, 6, 8, and 9 are already taken care of. Inspired by almost-black walls spotted on Apartment Therapy and Design*Sponge at the time, I painted the bedroom in June 2009 and still love the color. The bear print was a more recent purchase, aimed at using some of a small art budget started after we got married. The sheets, also a wedding gift, are here to stay (paired with other white and grey linens) and my aim is to use our two three-legged Frösta stools as bed side tables. I’m not sure whether they’ll hold up under the enormous pile of books Tom keeps in his “zone,” but we can certainly give it a go.

Another question is how well the stools’ slim profiles will jive with IKEA’s chunkier Mandal bed frame. IKEA’s other, lither, birch-made bedframe, Ånes, has gone the way of the Frösta stools (you can still see it in Anna of Door Sixteen’s bedroom).

Feeling lucky, I looked for an Ånes frame for sale on Craigslist and actually FOUND one in Bloomington, MN, but it was only a full-size. And, as previously stated, I’m not about to go out and buy all new sheets. But seriously, someone, buy it—please!

Those legs! The banana-y maple runners! No. 10, a splurge, has been on my wish-list for a long time. If I had a little Eames Rocker in the corner of our bedroom I promise it would not get covered in yesterday’s outfit, and the day before’s, and the day before that’s.

Why redo the bedroom? Short answer: I read too many blogs. And, admittedly, dark grey walls are lovely, but add a bunch of IKEA’s “medium brown” veneers from the Malm family, a dark rug, etc. and pretty soon you’re drowning in a prison cell. I’m hoping the switch to birch and bringing in more white will lighten things up.

If nothing else, I’d like to change the orientation of our bed back to how it was when we first moved in (above left). Remember, back when we didn’t have to close the window in the middle of the night due to rain falling on our faces? Aside from the practical reasoning, I just miss seeing bed/rug/bedside table at the end of the hallway.

Changing out the sickly bare bulb (above right) is a must. Which reminds me, any advice for how to work a ceiling medallion around the electrical casing leading to the overhead bulb would be much appreciated. Maybe a utility knife would do the trick?

Tomorrow I’ll share some of the inspiration for a change through photos from some of my favorite bloggers.

1. Scratch Travel Map of the World from Our Shop 2. A ceiling medallion (size TBD) for use with… 3. a LERAN lamp from IKEA 4. Sherwin Williams’s Software 5. an apple green Pleece Throw by Marianne Abelsson for Design House Stockholm 6. striped sheets from West Elm 7. IKEA’s MANDAL bed frame 8. “papa mama baby bear” by Red Cruiser paired with an IKEA RIBBA frame 9. IKEA’s (now discontinued) Frösta stools 10. White Eames Molded Plastic Rocker through Design Within Reach.

(Top images labeled 1–10 sourced from the sites respectively linked above.)

Remember Blu Dot’s Real Good Chair experiment? They’ve teamed up with Mono again with another real good idea: a Blu Dot Swap Meet. The basic premise is, if you love great design, but don’t have a real good money supply, Blu Dot will consider your offer of talents/treasures/etc. for a single piece from their collection. You won’t be getting a set of chairs: you can only ask for one of anything. But, you might just get the couch of your dreams or a new dining table. The project has been going all week, and I’ve been thinking about it since the very earliest announcements came from Blu Dot on Twitter and Facebook.

Tom suggested we offer Blu Dot a picnic and a leisurely ride through the city of Minneapolis upon our folding tandem (seen here), given that Blu Dot is a Minneapolis-based company. He left it to me to choose the piece of furniture we’d ask for in return. I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought.

Heading into the Walker Tuesday night to see Michael Hart speak as a part of the Insights 2011 Design Lecture Series, I couldn’t help but mention the Swap Meet to Julia as we walked past the Shop with several new Blu Dot pieces on display. And, what do you know, one of the projects Hart shared that evening was the Swap Meet itself.

Today, thinking the project was over at noon… I was delighted to see it’s actually on until midnight. And, I have finally decided on the Strut Square Coffee Table in watermelon. Those of you who know of our recent jigsaw puzzling adventures are already aware of our need for a larger table space in our place to further develop our jigsaw puzzling abilities. At 40 by 40 inches, this table is surely up to the task.

So, we’ve offered up a picnic for 2–6 Blu Dotters preceded by a bike ride on a sunny Minneapolis day in June. You know we are no strangers to winter picnics, but we thought for everyone involved it would be best to hold off hosting the picnic until early summer.

Here’s hoping our friends at Blu Dot deem this a reasonable, and desirable, trade. If you agree, vote for our swap at the Blu Dot Swap Meet!

Interested in proposing a swap of your own? You have until midnight to make an offer. Get the details from Har Mar Superstar and get swapping! Wondering where such a phenomenal idea came from? See Michael Hart of Minneapolis’ Mono discuss the Swap Meet and other recent projects from the firm on the Walker Channel.

Top photo: Kate Sommers Photography … who is trying to swap eggs for a new sectional.

I dislike spice racks—those awful powder-coated ornamental metal racks with pre-labeled, pre-packed spices and their counterparts in beechwood with Lazy Susans built into the base. They just don’t make sense for most cooks or most kitchens. They’re merely decorative at best but, as I remember the one mounted behind my grandmother’s range, more often covered in unsightly dust and grime.

At some point, though, I realized our own system of tumbling stacks of assorted jars wasn’t really working. It was hard to see what we had, what was running low, and in addition to the stuffed shelf of spices, we had several larger containers tucked away in another space. Inspired by an old Door Sixteen post from January ’09, I picked up a crop of RATIONELL VARIERA racks from IKEA on New Year’s Day.

A note on the installation: IKEA’s instructions recommend removing the door to which you’ll be mounting the racks and doing the project on a flat surface. In theory, this seems very practical, and in a kitchen with IKEA’s own cabinets installed it might even be easy. But given the thick and many layers of paint covering every hinge in our kitchen, I determined pretty quickly that the door wasn’t coming down. Bar clamps to the rescue! I was able to secure the door with clamps to another door, giving enough stability to drill.

Knowing that we’d have to leave some spices in the existing cupboard, we chose those for the door by frequency of use and by grouping types of herbs and spices together. Herbs fit in the top rack, another holds seeds, baking spices fill the third row, and the most colorful group sits at the bottom: sumac, cumin, turmeric, coriander, cayenne, and paprika. We kept salts and peppers and Tom’s collection of Penzeys curries on the shelf along with saffron packages and bay leaves (the only flavoring that refused to fit through the smallish mouths of the IKEA jars).

For the labels, I bought a few sheets of adhesive-backed paper and used a Martha Stewart punch to make the shapes.

Transferring the majority of the spices (above left) to the racks on the cupboard door created room for olive oil and prep bowls in this space (above right).

I finished this project on January 2, and a month later, it still brings me way too much happiness to see these neatly labeled groups of spices gracing the inside of our cabinet door every day. It’s so nice to have easy access to all our flavorings and enjoy their colors through clear glass. As a bonus, the easy-open lids make the jars great for cooking. And so far, there’s only a little bit of dust on top of the jars…