I give up. When we moved into our lovely home, the kitchen was in disrepair. While we managed to fix up most of the rest of our house, the kitchen remains in disrepair, so much so that the cupboard doors fall off spontaneously and add much excitement to my day. While I realize that there are many, many more serious issues in the world than leaping cupboard doors, I would like to renovate my kitchen. The problem is that renovating a kitchen has a cost associated with it.
I’ve decided to go with the flow. Since the cupboard doors seem to be flowing off, perhaps it is time to take them all off. Why not create open shelves? If you are looking for kitchen renovation ideas to do on the cheap, here are some open concept tricks for changes you can make to create open kitchen shelves.
I’m going to add shelf liners, preferably waxed cotton or oilcloth. The liners may come down over the edge of each shelf and have a simple pattern on them. I will use the colors in the pattern to repaint the kitchen. I don’t want to go overboard on the patterns and colors since I’m not a fan of loud kitchens, but a little bit of visual order in the form of similar colors would be nice. I may go the other way and paint everything white, using the dishes themselves as an accent color. Time will tell. Open shelving can create visual clutter, so it’s important to focus on a few colors in either the dishes or the shelves.
To store our flour, sugar, and other items I will collect matching or similar containers. This will create a casual but organized look on the food shelves. I want to contain our dishes to create a look of organization in the kitchen. I plan to do this through matching baskets. I will hang the matching mugs from the top of each shelf to add to a look to cohesiveness.
Open shelving will certainly make everything in the kitchen more accessible. It will also stop that pesky door problem of ours. Do you have an open shelving system in your kitchen? Does it work for you?
(Image thanks to giuatzy at stock exchange)