Making Over The Tiniest Kitchen In The World

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Perhaps you recall when we gave Justin's Wicker Park apartment an overhaul... At the time, we did nothing to the kitchen. We were stumped, to say the least. There was no storage. Hardly any shelving. No place for spices or pots and pans. 

Before:

The cabinets you DO see are filled with cups and plates... and the cabinets underneath the sink have no shelving or layering. Just one big space under there. So that means your food would be next to your under-the-sink garbage bin and cleaning supplies. Yuck? I think so!

Progress:

To deal with the shelving and storage problem, we decided to add some storage of our own. We added a bright red spice rack, which helped alleviate some of the kitchen stress... and, for a bit of fun, we smacked up a piece of art that mimics the bright red.  

  

We also added a few shelves above the sink, which we picked up at an antique store in Holland, Michigan. The industrial-looking silver shelves can hold a few odds and ends, like coffee grounds, paper towels, and an awesome non-aerosol olive oil spritzer.

Adding a super cheap (thanks, online shopping!) under-the-counter mug rack also freed up some space in the cabinets (while also helping play off of that mustard yellow color). I grabbed it online for 11 bucks and it arrived within two days. Semi-instant gratification? Thanks, internet (I mean Al Gore).

So, using a thrifted spice rack, antique silver shelves, and a cheapo under-cabinet organizer, we had freed up lots of space and organized as much as we thought we could. Yet, there was still a big problem. The new most obnoxious thing (because as soon as you eliminate one nuisance, another one pops up to take its place) was the clambering noise of pots and pans.

Every single time I wanted to cook, I had to wrestle (yes, wrestle) the appropriate pot or pan from an under-the-sink cabinet. Not only did I have to "get low" (sure, I'm only 23, but getting down on your hands and knees to cook is just obnoxious), but, inevitably, that the pan I wanted would always be stuck in between all of the others. Right in the middle. The most inaccessible place. It's Murphy's law... or perhaps his first cousin. Anyway, piles were spilled. Pots knocked other things over. Nothing was organized. And my brain was screaming.

And then I had a dream. Wouldn't it be splendid if, instead of being stacked 10 pots high, the pots and pans were hanging? It came just like a dream to me. To have pots and pans hanging from above, easily plucked like grabbing an apple from a tree?! It must be the kitchen version of the Garden of Eden! Can it exist?

Oh, that's right. Such a thing does exist! It's called a pot rack! For $39.42!

Come back tomorrow to see how it looks :)

DIY Decor | Ampersand & Art

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Remember when we gave Justin's living room a makeover? Well, more to come on that (after more than a few changes-and-re-arranges and a thrift store shelving adventure)... but, for now, I'd like to announce: the decor has spread. To the bedroom.

You might remember that the living room was full of bold colors, of which red somehow became the favored child. Well, this room will turn out to be the calmer, softer brother. We've only just begun...



I’ve wanted to make Ampersand art for a while now but was semi stumped on how to do it in a unique way.

I considered painting an ampersand onto a large scrap of wood or canvas, but it felt very “done before” and never came to fruition.

Then, while walking the halls of Ace Hardware (my personal “Eureka” location), Justin and I found a large sheets of Acrylic Transparency. They’re about 1/4 an inch thick and are pretty amazing. Without a fully formulated plan, we grabbed it.

We ended up spray painting around the Ampersand, so that the “background” of the piece is blue, and the ampersand, itself, is see-through. That means we can swap out what we place behind the art, to fill in the ampersand with any fabric, magazine clipping, or page from a book that we choose.

I'm still pretty obsessed with the idea. Why? Because it will always match. We can put anything behind it and instantly change its color and effect on the room.

How'd we do it?

Start with a transparent acrylic sheet...



Use painters tape (masking tape) to cover the sheet. I had almost covered the entire sheet when I realized I only needed to cover areas which would be used by the "&" we printed out (as that was the only tape we would be leaving on the board).

Choose an ampersand (&) in Microsoft Word, enlarge it to your preferred size, and print. We tried a variety of fonts (really, we had a few pages worth of samples) but ended up going with good old Times New Roman. I was, at first, stern on my sans-serif stance and convinced we would be going with something smooth... but, as we checked out various samples, we decided that Times New Roman had something really classic about it. It reminds me of newspapers and journalism. And, in the end, it just felt like the right thing to do. We made it as large as we could and printed it out.

Cut loosely around the edges (so that there is still white space, and enough room for tape) and then tape onto the sheet where you would like the ampersand to show up.

Use an exacto knife to cut out the ampersand.

Remove the tape surrounding the ampersand. Do this slowly and have an exacto knife handy to do extra cutting in places you may have not fully cut.

Spraypaint the art (leaving the tape on). You'll need to do a number of layers in order to get a solid coat, because the background is see through. We did a whopping 6 layers of blue spraypaint before stopping.

Once the spraypaint has dried, slowly remove the ampersand tape. Use an exacto knife to help lift up the tape.

Choose any fabric, magazine, etc to tape behind the acrylic sheet and show through.

To hang, we hot glued a piece of metal "teeth" we yoinked off of the back of a picture frame.

Here are two final product shots:

And a few shots up-close-and-personal:

So yes, we'll admit, there is much to be done in this room... I'm working on four wall art pieces using silhouettes and some additional shelving... Get excited!