adding open shelving in the kitchen + diy build on a budget

Pretty sure I’m over doing it with the amount of floating shelves we have in one are, but what’s two more?! This time I built my own floating shelves in the kitchen!! I can honestly say with full confidence these look SO MUCH BETTER than the first two that I built. The shelves actually opened up the kitchen quite a bit and I’m really happy about that.

Not only is my carpentry work getting better (big LOL) I’m researching a whole lot more before jumping into projects. Youtube has been my best friend during this whole process and I think I’ve watched 100 different tutorials on installing floating shelves in the kitchen. I watched so many that it’s hard to link just one, so if you’re interested I would search ‘installing floating shelves in the kitchen’ or variations of that.

I’ll be honest when I say I know nothing about wood, but from all the videos I knew that with kitchen shelves I wanted wood that wasn’t as heavy, as it will be holding up quite a bit of weight from all the dishes. I also had to get support rods to put into the studs in the wall. A lot of videos recommended I got these steel ones from Amazon.

This was a bigger project for myself because I had to cut into the drywall and down to the stud to secure the steel rods. The only aggravating part about this was that I ended up having to move the shelves over from where I originally wanted them so they were supported by the rods. Had I realized this sooner I probably would’ve made the shelves longer. Next time I will measure an ungodly amount and make my marks once. This part was easy. I’ve never cut through drywall so I didn’t know what to expect and all I had to do was trace my support bracket, cut through the drywall so it was a snug fit, and attach! This level of difficulty is probably a 2/10.

Back tracking a little bit here, but I don’t have a whole lot of tools all of the videos suggested to use so I did what I could. I also wanted to stick within a budget. A lot of the videos I saw suggested using butcher block and then drilling long holes in them for the rods in the studs to easily slide in. Butcher block is quite a bit more expensive than regular lumber and I don’t have any of the drill attachments they did. I think if I were to do this again, I would save up to use butcher block. It seems like a much easier route and the block is much lighter so you could hold more!

In total I spent right under $100. The steel brackets are what cost me the most and I had everything else I needed for this already at home. I love projects like this so I’m very excited to head into our next house and start them all over! When it comes to styling I doubt these shelves will ever be complete. I’m so indecisive when it comes to decor and since this is in the kitchen I don’t know what’s appropriate to style them with. It’s a big learning game and Pinterest is helping a girl out tremendously!!