DIY Kitchen Floating Shelves + Functional Styling

Why Floating Shelves?

Ever have one of those moments where you wonder what the hell took you so long to think of a solution? This project is one of them.

As you may or may not know, we live in a rowhome in Baltimore city. Meaning, kitchen storage is hard to come by. Over the past few years we’ve found ways to not only organize and create storage, but also incorporate functional decor. We have this knook by our back patio door that we’ve never really known what to do with and varies between a catch all, recycling pile, mini-bar; essentially a cabinet to shove any and all things possible. I was itching for a project, and suddenly had the a-ha moment for opening shelving on the back wall. Best part, we did it for under $50 dollars!

How to Build + Install

We purchased the barn wood from Second Chance (which has an amazing purpose/story behind the company) for $6 dollars. Yep, you read that right. I linked some affordable online options below!

Then, we had to decide whether or not we wanted a floating or bracket look. Because of our gray granite & stainless steel that I have been trying to work against by bringing in whites and woods, we decided to go floating. However, some gold/brass brackets and even black in instances, look amazing. Sharing the hardware we used and another type here:

G then cut the wood to the proper specs, measured an equal distance from the ends of the wall for each bracket (2 per shelf), aligned them, and once secure and hung to the wall, drilled accurate holes to ensure they holes would line up.

The tricky part is the drilling of holes into the wood. A trick he learned was using a screw eye on the drill bit, which allows you to visually see if you are going in level. This will ensure that your shelves are hung level as the brackets will go in smooth.

Styling for Function (+ Looks)

You can read my entire post dedicated to styling kitchen shelving here.

When it comes to styling, it is very easy to get excited, run out, buy a bunch of cute shelf decor, and ultimately end up with a shelf of pretty items that you never touch. However, we really wanted the extra counter space and needed to stay grounded to the original intent of the project. So, purchasing functional decor that provides storage (aka hides all the things) while looking cute, was the goal.

I love to start by grabbing anything from our storage to cut back on costs and seeing how I can make it work. From there, we purchased functional pieces like a bread box and flour + sugar canisters. It may sound obvious, but previously bread and those items were just thrown in our pull out pantry drawer. This will be a fun new space to switch up for hosting as a mini bar, the holidays, and really opened up our space to ultimately look larger. Wins all around.

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TLDR; We found a very inexpensive way to create more space while improving the look of the room and are sharing all sources & additional decor to style your own shelves!

Check out our other DIY Project!