The First Project: Building Open Shelving in the Kitchen

Back in April, we said we wanted to begin posting again like we used to. Well, it’s September and here we are.
The grief process is a long one and we are still slowly learning how to do the things we used to do. Thank you for your patience.
This post is special to us and I wanted it to be the first because it was the very first project we did after Kamri died.
So this one means a lot and we are excited to finally be able to share it with you.

They needed to go. Something needed to go. Kamri was gone, our world was shattered, and our house felt foreign. I remember it like it was just the other day… that feeling of being strangers in our own home. The house had always been meant for our kids, for Kamri, but she was gone and now the house felt all wrong. All of the things we had already done to it since we moved in didn’t matter anymore and all the aspects we had dreamed of changing in the future felt like voices whispering in our ears, “this is not yours… you don’t belong here… this is not your home”.

So something needed to go. Something needed to be changed. It was a very peculiar, but crystal clear understanding in our minds: Our lives are different and so our house needs to be different. If we were going to stay here, the house itself… the look and feel… had to change. So we ripped out the kitchen cabinets.

The kitchen had been the room that we’d done the least amount of work to and made the least amount of changes, and as a result, felt the least like us. I had a hard time even finding pictures of it with our own stuff! The shot above was taken before we moved any of our own things in. Short of deep cleaning the drawers, cabinets, refrigerator, and counters, we didn’t do anything to change the cosmetic appearance. But when Kamri died, for some reason, the kitchen became Public Enemy Number One. It was as if we needed someone, something to be able to take out our rage on and the kitchen was something we could “destroy” without causing harm to anyone else or ourselves.

If you’ve been around with us for awhile now, you may remember what our kitchen looks like… at least, what it looked like when we bought it. One of the things that we loved about the house was how open and airy the layout is. There are definitely some defined rooms, which we like, but also quite a few spaces that open into each other to create the feel of an open floor plan. Here is the initial video house tour we shot before we moved anything of ours in or made any changes… it may help to orient you as to how the house is laid out.

From the beginning, we knew that sometime (way) down the road, we would renovate the kitchen… new floors (throughout the house), new cabinets, new counters, a back splash, and new appliances. Until that day, though, we were perfectly happy using what we had and doing a few easy updates to make it feel like our own. Even those changes were not high on our priority list, as we had just moved and a week later, found out we were pregnant with Kamri. We just figured that we’d get to it someday.

Well, someday came and we desperately needed change, so we took one look at the kitchen and decided that it was time for some of the upper cabinets around the window go. Right then and there, we unscrewed the anchor screws from the back and pulled them off the wall. It was the beginning of the next chapter. We didn’t know what that next chapter would be and we weren’t necessarily interested in it, but DANG did it feel good to rip something apart and make it feel different.

The window in our kitchen looks out into the backyard (which I love), but had previously been surrounded by upper cabinetry. While they were functional in the storage they provided, it often felt like you were washing dishes in a dark little box, so we decided to remove a set of them to lighten things up. Looking at the window, the left set of cabinets, although the bigger set, were hard to reach because of the island and we were finding that we did not use them as often for this reason. In the end, we decided that the lesser-used cabinets would be the best to remove.

After taking the cabinets down, we patched and painted the wall before building the “floating” shelves. I won’t go too much into the blueprints of how we built them because there are so many better tutorials out there to follow (here’s one and here’s another and even one more if you’re looking), but the basic concept is to build a frame out of 2x4s (doesn’t matter what the wood looks like because it will be covered), build a “sleeve” to slide over the frame (does matter what the wood looks like because this is what is seen from the outside), attach the frame to the wall (make sure you’re screwing into studs!), slide the sleeve over the frame, and secure with a few screws.

I cannot even explain to you the feeling right after we got those shelves up. As with any DIY (even the ones that should be easy), it was not a cut and dry job with no hiccups. In that season of our lives, even the smallest speed bump could initiate full-blown fits of rage and melt down. Compounded with the pre-existing feelings of defeat and heartbreak, every little hiccup felt like a personal injury. There was cursing, crying, and a lot of “of course it wouldn’t be easy, it wouldn’t be our lives if it was easy”, but WE HUNG THEM. And they stayed put.

Stepping back, a faint feeling of victory washed over us… it felt good to finish something and have it turn out the way we had expected, the way we had hoped. It was almost too good to be true, like perhaps they would fall and crash onto the counter at any moment. But no, they stayed.

Then we sanded, stained, and decorated them. We invested time, energy, and pieces of our home and our family into them. Pictures of our baby, a framed calligraphy of Kamri’s name, our dinner plates, our grandmother’s glassware. It was the first time that I remember feeling accomplishment and security, and so ownership, of a part of our home again. Like it was ours and we were welcome. It took a long time for the rest of the house to fall in place and feel the same way (a journey of projects and evolving rooms we will continue to share on here), but this was our starting point.

So let me show you. Let me show you a very special place in our home, one that gave us a piece of our life back. I looked… the date on some of those pictures of the building process is 2/11/17. Not even a full month after Kamri died. The pictures I’m about to show you, I took this week… the shelves have not changed. What we put on them has stayed the same, which just further reminds me what a stronghold, a safe place they have become in our home. Joyfully, we have more of our family to add in this season and we will surely do so, but here is what they look like today.

The bottom shelf is the landing spot for the bowls and plates we use on a regular basis, as well as a collection of glassware that we inherited from Mitch’s grandmother. The angled sides make them sparkle like little diamonds up on the shelf and we love that we have such a sweet reminder of his grandmother right in the center of our house.

Also on that bottom shelf are a few nods to sweet Kamri; a picture of the three of our hands all together and one of the cards we received after she passed away that brings us a little comfort every time we see it. Her joy shines on and on. I remember feeling like that card seemed to capture it all, just in that one sentence.

As for the top shelf, we filled it with things that we don’t use as often, but are equally as lovely to look at. It is home to some more drink ware, and a pretty pink glass pitcher to go along with our color scheme, a plant for some greenery, and one of our very favorite things…

Some very sweet people gifted us with Kamri’s name in calligraphy and one of them lives in her room and the other out here. I have no other explanation besides it just felt right at that point for her to be there, in the middle of everything, and it still feels right today. We love the beauty of the art and the sweet nod to little Kam.

The shelves have become such a happy spot in our home and now that they have withstood the test of time, I look forward to changing things in and out for the seasons, bringing in new pieces, and adding pictures of our other little love right up there with his big sister. For the first time in a storm of defeat, the shelves felt like a win. And they were the beginning of a domino effect of updating our house to feel like our home again.

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that the cabinets look a little different than they do in the first picture? That’s another story for another day and we can’t wait to tell it to you. 🙂