Kitchen Cubby Makeover with Open Shelves for Storage

Do y’all know what it means to own an older home (I mean 1980’s and before)? To me it means lower ceilings, small bathrooms and minimal closets. Most of all, it means a smaller kitchen or minimal cabinet space. When we purchased our 1980’s rustic beach house, we knew one project we would complete immediately after we moved in. This project involved moving a few things around in the kitchen and creating a new kitchen cubby makeover with DIY open shelves for storage.

Let me begin this story by explaining what used to live in this space. Can you guess? Yep, this space was supposed to house a refrigerator. Apparently fridges have grown a bit since the 1980’s because any modern day fridge stuck out like an eyesore. I knew we had to do something different with it.

I had the idea to move the fridge to the adjacent wall in our kitchen.

After we moved the fridge I created a DIY beverage and coffee bar.

Once the fridge was moved, we were left with a blank wall.

Kitchen cubby makeover with open shelves for storage

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The first thing I did was cover up the wall with this lovely wallpaper.

Then I found this fabulous piece of furniture (below) at a local antique shop that fit the space perfectly!

After living with the wallpaper a while, I decided it wasn’t the right color for this space. Thank goodness for the peel and stick wallpaper, it came right off!

I decided to replace the blue floral peel and stick paper with an exposed brick wallpaper.

You can see all about the brick wallpaper and how to apply regular wallpaper vs. peel and stick.

You can shop the brick wallpaper I’ve used HERE.

After installing the wallpaper on the wall of our kitchen nook, I decided it would look best to add a few shelves to this space.

Initially I wanted DIY floating shelves like we had in our old living room.

Floating shelves are only “stable” at about 12″ deep, and I wanted these shelves to be 18″ deep. This meant “floating shelves” were not an option.

My next option was making my own custom fit shelves with brackets.

I wanted the brackets to look minimal and yet still stylish. I found a company on Etsy that makes really sturdy steel shelf brackets.

Kitchen nook makeover with DIY shelves

I made my own wood shelves and painted them white. Ready to see what it all looks like?

As a side note; I added a family charging station in the top drawer of the cabinet. It’s been such a great tool to organize all of our electronics in one central place!