DIY Wood Shelving

I am always itching to start a new project in the fall. I guess it is hardwired into me from the school calendar but I definitely crave new beginnings at this time of year. With Billy's upcoming surgery, we can't plan anything big just yet so we completed this small project in a day. It made a big impact on freshening up the kitchen/dining level in our house.

We installed these shelves where our big farmhouse hutch was previously. I will share where we moved that to in a later post. In fact, we shifted around this entire level of our home recently.

I wanted the shelves to be substantial so we used 2x10s from Home Depot and stained them with Minwax English Chestnut. The brackets are also from Home Depot. Total cost was under $50. Billy always has at least one trusty "helper" at his feet.

Having new shelves to style is like Christmas morning to me. I mainly used things I already had around the house for now. When I set out to style shelves, I find it useful to gather more items than I know I will need both from around the house and in the storage area of our basement. I laid them all out in our dining room table.

And from there I tried a few different arrangements, editing until I was happy with the result. I added some sources to the picture below.

I am pleased to have the coffee pot and mug rack off of the kitchen counters. Cluttered kitchen counters start to drive me nuts so I think this coffee station will work out well.

The painted console table fits the space for now. That console table sure gets a workout in our house. It has been used as a desk, a sofa table and now under these shelves. It definitely needs a new coat of paint but I decided to keep this photo "real" rather than edit out the blemishes. You can see some (gasp!) cords in the backround by the sofa as well. I like how the darker shelves balance out the darker pieces in this space, like our dining room table.

Of course, now I am brainstorming how to style these shelves for fall. Stay tuned, I will be sharing that soon!