Building our own upper kitchen shelves

One common misconception with “insurance” is that the money is endless when you are rebuilding your house. “It’s okay its insurance money.”-quoted one contractor. The average person doesn’t have to deal with this nightmare in their lifetime so they wouldn’t know any different. 10,000$ this is the number allotted to kitchen cupboards we were laughing that we could build a kitchen for that only when the figures started coming in, I was not laughing in fact I was a little blown away. So we were getting bottom cupboards period. When the money ran out that was allowed that meant there were no more things going in. Only let’s think about the reality of this, where the heck are you going to store your plates and glasses. I for one am not going to admit how many months it took for that thought process to hit my very thick skull. What I did know was we couldn’t afford to get them through the builder, l however was worried about miss matching if we just grabbed something from our local home depo. Here’s a funny fact about me, the projects stress me out though I do love the result. Since most of the projects taken on in our house are because I want them, I feel obligated to help. I will be the first to admit I don’t know what I am doing and sometimes more a hinderance than anything else. I’m the ideas girl, I know what I want but I have no idea how to execute the project or what we need or any real-life solutions. But I know I want this idea in my head and Tanner is then left to try and make sense of the non-sensical. He suggested live edge board and brackets, I hated the idea, shot it down and that was it… or was it. About a month later we were into the plotting out the spa and realizing it needed shelves. Tanner took us to the local sawmill he knew the owner of, we needed some more for the fence anyways and he was picking up some live edge so the spa shelves were sturdy. I watched him sort through the pile to pick the best boards, thinking what the actual F. (Little did I know at this point that we would end up purchasing this entire pile by time we were done) To say I was not impressed was an understatement. There was a look I was going for with the reopen, the main look was cobbled together, because we were doing it on a budget. He told me to have a little faith, I did not. Hard core annoyed we set on our adventure back home. Tanner measured the shelves to size and took a plainer to them. The first time around was a disaster as there was a giant chunk out of the blade which in turn took chunks out of the wood. Here we go again with the hot mess express I thought to myself. Tanner worked some magic with many cuss words and re-attempted. This time seemed to go much smoother as he didn’t have his angry eyebrows on. We then took a little palm sander to the wood, to make it extra polished and smooth. The next step was stain, we chose the colour Ebony as it was the darkest available and it would match the colour theme to the room. Something I learned during this project is those garbage foam paint brushes in the house they are actually meant for stain, who knew. I have to take some cuss words in my head back. The other thing I had no idea was that you have to wipe stain off for it to work properly, the third thing is that you should probably wear gloves as it does not wipe off skin so easily..hence the name….STAIN… Once the shelves are done they require a clear coat, we opted for a glossy finish as it was what we had sitting around. They turned out beautiful. So well in fact we decided to add some into our kitchen for not only our plates and glasses but also coffee nook and cook book shelf. For us this project was incredibly reasonably priced, however if you do not have the tools it could add up a fair bit. But I am sure with a little ingenuity, some borrowing of tools and some bargain shopping at your local independent Sawyer, you will have just as much success as us. Sawyer is the technical term for a person who cuts logs into useable lumber. I learned that on this adventure as well. Follow our Sunday blogs for more segments of building our home on a budget.