The kitchen is my favorite room in my house. It has many antiquated features, yellowed linoleum, and the occasional ant or mouse, but I still love it because it is where I spend time making food for other people, which makes me happy. I can deal with the fact that my stove does not have a vent hood or that the floor in front of the shallow sink is sagging, but this was too much:
I realize that part of the problem here is my mess, but due to the occasional ant or mouse, any food that is not in a can has to be on this shelf, away from the cabinets with mouse holes in them. (The milk cartons are for a later project, which I will post about when it gets finished.)Jake the carpenter to the rescue! I drew up a rough sketch of a better looking shelf, and Jake started building.
Once the shelf was finished, I spent the better portion of two days painting it in my dining room.
Then I took the old shelf down.
It looks as though the last time my landlords painted, they painted around the shelf. So the kitchen used to be blue. Imagine that. (Incidentally, the bathroom mirror has the same thing going on.)I will give them props for attempting to use drywall anchors for the hanging shelf, even though they failed...
...and I pulled them out with my fingers.
The wall needed paint, so I threw on a few coats.
(Notice that the wall curves at bottom left?)
Crackers the dog eats dinner in the mess that now consumes the rest of my kitchen.
When I installed the shelf, that curve in the wall came back to haunt me.
It looks like the shelf is peeking around the corner. Out of the six possible points of contact for the floor, two were actually touching it.
Jake came to the rescue again, shimming the shelf for me so that it would be level and sturdy. I put all the mess from the kitchen neatly onto the shelf, and it was finished!
