Cottage Kitchen Open Shelves
Open shelving in the kitchen, boy everyone has a strong opinion about this. :) Hi Friends, who wants a cottage update? Many of you do apparently ha ha. I have received so many kind emails asking about the downsizing, moving and the renovations to the cottage, I am overwhelmed with your kindness and interest. I’ll…
Open shelving in the kitchen, boy everyone has a strong opinion about this. :)
Hi Friends, who wants a cottage update?
Many of you do apparently ha ha. I have received so many kind emails asking about the downsizing, moving and the renovations to the cottage, I am overwhelmed with your kindness and interest. I’ll post more about downsizing – honestly it was hard, emotionally and physically, and I’ll chat more about it soon, but for now, I’m mid renovations of this old cottage so I’ll start there. We did some minor renovations a few years ago, cosmetic mostly, not we are working on making it more practical and comfortable for us. Having an actual cabinet to put food in made sense to us lol) Right now, our big dilema is, I have to decide if I’m going to go with open shelving or more upper cabinets?
Here is a picture of the side of the kitchen from our first tour of the house before we bought it. We did repaint etc but there was never any cabinets on this side and the fridge felt so squishy when you came in.
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We were preparing to start our big cottage kitchen renovation, the design had been completed and the Ikea cabinets purchased and were stacked in every inch of my main floor, bathroom, living room and kitchen, crazy. We were starting to sort the boxes into cabinet parts one Friday night when we realized several cabinets had not been ordered. (they were out of stock when our kitchen designer ordered them). He had forgotten to tell us. Whomp. Whomp.
This caused 2 issues:
1) We would not be able to start anything that day as we needed to start with the upper cabinets, so an hour-long trip to Ikea would be necessary
2) We thought all our cabinets were purchased but all of a sudden we had to spend another 1000.00 for those cabinets. That was a bummer as we are “pay-as-we-go” people. Our kitchen had come in at such a great price (now we know why) that we splurged and had our electrician install pot lights (no regrets there though).
So….we were still going to the cabinets, but while Mr. FPM made plans to drive to Ikea Saturday morning I popped on Instagram and the first picture I saw was this photo from The Rustic Pallet and it stopped me mid scroll!! (I pretty much want to recreate her whole house)
So, of course, I posted on Front Porch Mercantile’s Facebook page asking my peeps what everyone thought about open shelving (Read that post here.) Boy, did I get a lot of opinions! The results seem to be most people love the look not the practicality of them.
I also poked around quickly online and found these great inspirations.
This from Gross to Grandiose, see the full post here.
I’ve always loved my friend Shannon’s open shelves, I adore her style and love her entire kitchen renovation, you can see her kitchen on her blog, Homemade Lovely here. I also asked her if she still loved them (she does – of course!)
More inspiration, these pretty ones from Chatfield Court. So warm and lovely.
Most people like the look but worry about keeping them “staged” and the dust was a worry. Since it’s just Mr. FPM and I and I am pretty good about dust (well kinda) and most people told me that they had no regrets about installing them, we decided to go for it. We realize we don’t have many dishes, I love to display things (and was truly sad that my designer could not find a place for a shelf).
Our thoughts are that if we hate them, we can always just go buy more Ikea cabinets and install them!
We’re off to find shelf wood soon and brackets, my plan is to use black iron and thick wood and stain it with our natural Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint in Curio.
We are picking away at getting settled and will be posting more about our kitchen renovation (the good, the bad and the ugly) lol, all the cottage projects (there are SO many) and I will also share more about the downsizing and move, we’ve been working hard to find our “new normal” here and appreciate how many of you have reached out asking us to share.
I’m on the hunt now for new white dishes, blue green drinking glasses, wicker blinds and so much more.
What do you think?
Do you like open shelving? Any words of advice?
I’ll share more updates next week!
Cheers friends,
xo
Wendy
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Yes, love the look of open shelving, but here in Australia, where our houses are always open to try catch breezes, too much dust to keep a handle on it all the time! I LOVE the look though and probably would def give it a try if it were my cute little cottage by the sea! ;)
I love the idea of open shelving , i find that it eliminates the wants as opposed to the needs. i find it looks clean and uncluttered… i am looking forward to seeing the ongoing project and your progress…. so enjoy your site.