Storage Wars At Home

Yes the title is corny.  It could have something to do with the fact I'm watching a Storage Wars marathon while doing this post.  Obviously the title says it all...I've been having some storage wars at home, mainly in the kitchen.  This house is great, but the kitchen is a bit smaller than I'm used to.  After living here for almost 2 months I started to see the kinks in my organization plan.  Main trouble spot was where I put the spices.

As you can see in this picture I put the spices above the stove. Great idea, no?!  Not so much!  I realized this after twice in one day, while cooking something hot on the stove, I had to get a step stool out to grab some spices out of the cabinet.  In the process of doing this the spice jar fell out of my hand and landed on the floor spilling everywhere.  Second time it was vegetable oil...you can imagine the mess.  After cleaning these messes I realized it was time to figure out a solution and fast.

The hubby and I went on a trip to a few antique stores.  We went to a new store and I found this amazing apothecary cabinet.  I fell in love, but quickly fell out of love when I saw the $2,000 price tag. The cabinet was perfect and had an amazing patina that I loved.  However, it was a tad bit overpriced in my opinion.  After this we decided to go back to a store where we've had lots of luck.  Sure enough we got lucky and found a solid wood shelf from the 1930's for $30.  Now that was more like it!!  While taking it out of the store, part of the bottom fell off so I knew it needed some work.  Not to mention the fact that it was filthy, covered in spider webs and a few spiders :-)

Here's what the shelf looked like.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but it has a lot of cool details on the top and sides.  My Son, Hunter says it looks like a castle.

You can see the detail at the top in this picture along with some of the damage.

In this picture you can see more damage on the bottom shelf.  This is the shelf that had to be glued back on as well.

This is a picture of what the back looked like after I glued and wood filled the lower portion.  It had some water damage at the back, but I was able to easily fix it.  

Now this is one of the things I fell in love with!  I loved the detailing on the sides and knew once I put some paint on this thing it would be great.

This is what the piece looked like after one coat of Annie Sloan chalk paint in Old White.  I didn't want it to look perfect so I only needed one coat.

Now those cool details are much more visible!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the sides!

After my first coat of chalk paint, I knew exactly what I needed to do.  I hadn't stopped thinking about that apothecary cabinet and wanted a similar patina and look on this shelf.  I wanted this shelf to look like it's been around for a long time, which it has been :-)  I took my second color of chalk paint, Coco, and dry brushed it on the shelf.  Then with a wet cloth I wiped it off.  The best part about this chalk paint is it's water soluble. When I wiped, a bit of the Coco paint came off and some of the Old White paint came off too leaving the dark wood showing through in spots.  Just the look I was going for.   After a coat of clear wax on the whole shelf I was done!

Here's the finished shelf.

Here you can see those great details on the side :-)

Here are those great top details!

Now came the fun part...filling it up!  This was not a problem at all.  On the top shop we put our Starbucks mug collection.  When we go away on vacation and there's a Starbucks we buy a mug with the name of the city we're visiting on it.  They've been stacked in a cupboard, but now we can easily access them.  I already had these baskets in storage and they fit perfectly!

Here you can see my spices in the baskets.  No more worries about them falling from up high and spilling anymore!

I couldn't be happier with how this turned out.  It fits perfectly in this spot in the kitchen and gives me lots of extra storage.

The end cost on this project was $30.  I already had the paint from another project and the baskets as well.  It only took  3 hours to paint and wax the cabinet so it wasn't even a huge time investment. I'd say this is the best $30 and 3 hours I've spent in a long time!  I don't think there'll be any storage wars in my house anymore!