Whilst I am pretty smitten with our kitchen in general, there is a little area which is so bland I can’t stand it: our shelving units.
It’s your bog standard kitchen shelves really, intended for displaying something. ANYTHING. It’s made up of an open shelf bang in the middle of two cupboards with glass doors. The problem is, the only thing we’ve been displaying so far is JUNK!
Mostly leftover shopping, miscellaneous kitchen crap, and too many power tools. Please observe Exhibit A…
BO-RING.
And so, one weekend in January, we decided that enough was enough. It needed a makeover and we chose to use it as our bar. Sure I’d love a bar cart or a fully purpose-built bar somewhere over by the dining area, but layouts could get awkward and anyhow, before we know it we’ll have a toddler, so up on the shelves out of reach is going to work best.
The clutter has been cleared. Our bottles of booze have been moved to the cupboards. The speciality glasses have been put on display. The decanters that have long been sat in dark and dusty corners of the house have been filled with some of our favourite tipples. And some of our trinkets and ornaments have finally been put on display.
But something was missing.
I bought this wallpaper for a wall art project which sits proudly on our kitchen feature wall (here if you missed it). And I loved it so much I wanted to see it MORE. It was destined for the shelves.
(Don’t make fun of my value tape measure, okay? Got to keep the the costs down for these things! *wink*)
It was surprisingly straightforward to do. I measured the space behind the shelves and cut the wallpaper to size carefully with scissors, making sure the pattern matched up in the right places. If you’re doing this for a standard fixed shelving unit – perhaps a bookcase you can’t removed all shelving on – I would go a few centimetres extra with your measurements and then you can score with a sharp blade once it’s stuck on for a really neat finish. Thankfully, our shelves come out completely so any rough edges were completely hidden once the unit was slotted back into place.
Using a thin layer of wallpaper paste and a really good rubbing with a wallpaper brush to smooth out and remove any excess gloop (surely not the technical term), that was it!
I love the wallpaper so much. It brightens up a dull area, and when the evening draws in with shadows on the shelves, it looks all moody which is right up my alley. I’m planning on having loads of house plants in here too pretty soon, so the paper will complement this so well!
Shall we take a look at the original shelf before we see it all tarted up? Oh go on then…
MY EYES!
And now for something completely different…
Do you like it?
It’s all stuff that – to me – is pure prettiness, whilst remaining just as practical as we need it to be. I know it may not appeal to the minimalists among you, but after living with floorboards and plain walls and empty units, I’m ready for patterns, colour and maximalism!
Take a sneaky peak at our booze cupboards and all of our little trinkets that finally have their own home in the house.
I just love the Martini mirrored bar sign in the left cupboard bought for a whopping 50p at a car boot sale. I’d love one for the other side but with Southern Comfort instead. It’s my tipple of choice. Probably why there is so little left in there. Oops…
This frame was a steal from HomeSense and matches one other that sits on the feature wall around the corner of this room, helping to tie everything together! The wooden apple was a Christmas gift which has floated along our kitchen counter top for too long now. Settle home, dear apple. You are home now. The glass vase on the left used to be an Absolut bottle which I sliced using a CC bottle cutter and topped with some fresh flowers. Only £2 from Homebase. I do love a bargain.
The decanters have all been gifted to us and it’s wonderful to finally get them on display. Joe’s pride and joy! So that we don’t forget which is which, I bought these mini easels from eBay to label the drinks and their percentage. I got a set of 10 and the unused ones can be used for place names when we have people round for dinner.
Want to know where anything else is from? Give me a shout in the comments.
So there you have it. Just a quick mini makeover which has yet again pushed our kitchen further into the direction I want it to – absolute fabulousness.
And if anyone is wondering how I did this when my baby was a newborn, here is a little behind the scenes sneaky peak…ALL THE TOYS.
