Cookbook Shelf

Ever since I pulled down the hanging cupboards in the kitchen I've been trying to decide what to do with this wall.

the blue tape is marking the studs

The counter space tends to collect stuff and the wall is wasted space. I've thought about putting up some floating shelves when we re-do the kitchen, hopefully before the baby comes this summer, but we'll have to see how things go financially. In the meantime, I'm tired of the stack of cookbooks and the clutter it attracts, so I decided to do a temporary fix.

I didn't want to hassle with building floating shelves until I know if we like shelves on this wall, so I decided to do a simple shelf supported by brackets. I originally bought these scrolly brackets, but had to return them.

Turns out they're only decorative and you attach them to an upper corner of a doorway with one nail. Not what I was looking for.

Then I found these smaller brackets that actually are meant to be weight-bearing.

Metal bracket for resting on a screw. Much better than a single nail hole.

All I had to do was screw two screws into the studs (which is why they're off-center on the wall), making sure they were level, and then hang the brackets on the screws.

I rested the board on top of the brackets and screwed it into the brackets to keep it in place.

The board is a 12" board, so it's a little wide for the brackets, but I didn't want to cut down the board, so I left it as-is. Since it's a temporary fix, this is just one of the things we're testing out. This was also a quick and inexpensive project since I had the board and screws and just needed to buy the brackets.

We have cookbooks in our library, but we like to have the ones we use most often in easy reach. There's also a stack of recipes I've printed from various blogs that I still need to put in a notebook.

I added a vase of flowers Sunshine made me a couple years ago and a jar with a small bird's nest in it. I need to find something nice and heavy (maybe some antique irons- the heavy cast iron ones) to put on either side of the books to keep them in place and prevent them from knocking the other items off the shelf.

Overall, I like the shelf on the wall. A second one above it would be handy for holding decorative items like my white pitcher and that blue bowl. I think the shelf should probably extend across most of the space (centered better), and floating shelves would hide the fact that the studs are off center on the wall. If we didn't need the brackets, we could also lower the shelves a little, and I think 10" wide shelves would be more than sufficient for holding cookbooks and such.