Form and Function: Installing Floating Shelves

Hey, everyone! Happy Monday! We’ll get right to it today…

After finishing the kitchen and adding our homey touches, we still felt as though something was missing from the equation. Take a look at this blank wall:

You feel the same, huh?

At this point in time, we were facing two “predicaments”:

1. We wanted something to fill that bright, yellow void.
2.  We needed to find a way to make some more room in our kitchen cabinets.

In the interest of killing two birds with one stone, we settled on this idea of floating shelves… our thought/hope was that they could provide some extra kitchen decor AND be a space to store some things that were currently taking up space in our cabinets.

The great thing about this project is that it can be done regardless of if you own your home or are renting! This is an easy project that just requires an hour or so and some patience. 🙂

Step 1: Find the shelves you want to hang. You can do this in one of two ways- buy some pre-made or make your own! If you’re into the “building things yourself” path, you can find some great plans here and here. If you’re looking to cut some time off the process, you can buy them already made and just install them yourself. We went for the second option. After getting a starter set (2 shelves) from my parents for my birthday, we headed out to Target to get another and complete our dream of having four!

Step #2: Figure Out Look and Spacing. We knew that we wanted the shelves to stagger a bit, to give the look some interest. We also knew that we wanted the space between them to be large enough that we could fit tall-ish items on each shelf, if necessary. If this meant that the top shelf was out of reach, unless standing on a chair… which was no big deal to us. We measured about 9.5 inches between each shelf and 3.5 inches between the side of the shelf and the edge or corner of the wall (for the shorter spaces). I know, that’s hard to follow… here’s a diagram to help:

Don’t ask me how we settled on those measurements- I have no idea. As long as you get a look that you’re okay with and your spacing is close enough to look even, that’s good enough. No one is going to come into your house with a tape measure. And if they do, you have our support in kindly showing them to the door. 🙂

Step #3: Balance it out! We checked and re-checked our nail marks with a level before making holes in the wall. Good thing, too, because no matter how meticulously we measured, they were never completely balanced on our first go around. For us, this was a two person job, but with a little patience and technique, you could probably pull it off by yourself if necessary.

Step #4: Step back and check ‘er out. Is it what you want? Spacing okay? It’s always a good idea to double check these things before jumping right into the decorating part (which is definitely the most fun).

Step #5: Fill ‘er up! We took this opportunity to empty two whole shelves of cabinet space and instead of storing it’s contents, we put them on display! Mugs galore! As predicted, our dishware is also of the blue family and works great with the rest of our blue/teal decor.

This system has freed up a lot of much needed storage space for us and now we have an entire empty shelf to use! Yay!

The best part about it is that we also got some extra (free!) decorations out of the deal. This is a super easy way to use what you have to accomplish the job and save yourself a few bucks from going out and buying new things to display. Moral of the Story: Make your stuff do more for you! Put it to work with more than one job.  

Did you catch our sneaky way of hiding the ethernet socket eyesore? 🙂

Has anyone else utilized floating shelves? We’re huge fans and loving the extra space it gives us, as well as the extra airtime it gives our drink ware. Send us pics (The “Contact Me” tab has the email you can send it to) of your shelves hard at work! We’ll be kind and share with the rest of the class 🙂

Until next time, hope you have a “fun” day!

-Leslie