Finishing Touches on the Kitchen Shelves.

I bet you thought the kitchen was finished, right?  Well that’s a big fat no.  We are still in the process completing those few last details.  You probably don’t recall, but back in April I gave you a sneak peak when Ryan surprised me by cutting the shelves for the wrap-around cabinets (found here).  Well, about two months later we finally got the motivation to finish those bad boys up.  It’s really no surprise that it’s taken this long since we are officially burnt toast.  And now that it’s boating season our once high motivation (which dropped to a 4 a few weeks ago) has now leveled out at 2 on a rating scale of 1 to 10.

Needless to say, those bitches be done!  Excuse my french, but the process just took forever.  After Ryan cut the three boards back in April, the kitchen looked like this:

Michelle set up her unofficial paint shop in the basement and primed and painted all three shelves over the course of a few days.  Ryan hung the  bottom and middle shelves by screwing them to the side of each cabinet.  We lived with these two bare shelves for about a month and a half.

To hang the third (high) shelf Ryan had to cut some support brackets.  There was absolutely no way he could secure this shelf from inside the cabinet since it sits right on the soffit.  (yes, we know we have to patch the crease between the ceiling and wall)

This wall is funky which is why the support braces look like a jigsaw puzzle.  Ryan pre-drilled the holes and halfway drilled in each screw before going into the side of the cabinets.

I used a small level and pushed against the wood to hold it steady while Ryan drilled the screws on the opposite wall.

Obviously the raw wood needs to be primed and painted (story of my life) but before doing so I got out the wood putty so I could fill in the screw holes and the gaps, making the shelves seamless into our existing cabinetry.

I used a putty knife on the screw holes to pack the filler in, but in the cracks I ended up just using the trusty ‘ole finger.

It looks pretty nasty, but after smoothing out the filler with some fine 220 grit sandpaper, you will never notice my handiwork.

I find it completely ironic to put so much work into something that you don’t want to be seen.  Never really thought about that one before…HA!  But anywho, you guessed it, I hit the smoothly sanded areas up with some more Kiltz latex primer and paint.  I think in all I gave the shelves two coats of paint and one final overall touch up.  They look all purdy, glossy and white.  As usual, love.

I have absolutely no idea what to display on the top shelf.  It’s so high so it has to be something purely decorative.  Maybe I should shuffle the aloe plant (a homegoods steal for $5, holla!) to the top and stack some cookbooks on the middle shelf.  We really enjoy the bottom shelf housing our ripening fruit.  It frees up some counter space and the fruit gets  good light.

One last glimpse…….

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It only took 2 months to git-r-done, but I am very pleased with the final result.  Now that we’ve officially kicked it back into gear I foresee completing several more project this coming weekend.  What about you?  Any good DIY plans for the weekend?!