New Kitchen Shelf - from 1 to 2

Yes, singular shelf. Change of plans. Lemme explain.

When I first saw our kitchen and the long empty wall above a row of cabinets, I knew right away that I wanted to fill that blank space with 2 cafe shelves, something like these:

(source)

So Chuck bought all of the supplies (8' MDF boards and 6 corbels) and I got to priming and painting.

The color I used for the final coats is "Horseradish" by Olympic mixed as Valspar paint at Lowes, and is the color we picked out for the kitchen cabinet makeover. It's a creamy white and think it'll look great with our dark counters and black appliances eventually!

I used a mini foam roller for the boards to give them a good even coat with no brush marks, and then used some cheapo foam brushes for the corbels (which were a PITA to paint, let me tell you! Drip city!).

So I got 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint on everything, sanding lightly in between, and when it was time to put them up in the kitchen, we hit a snafu. We had measured length, but we had never really measured the height of the space. We had just assumed that 2 shelves would fit. What we forgot about is the soffitt that's above the space, lowering the ceiling a noticeable amount. Oops. So after measuring and finding the studs (which turned out to be in odd spots...?), we ended up only mounting 1 shelf. I was pretty bummed as I had primed and sanded and painted everything (and just about lost my mind in the process!), and could've saved myself some time (and $! The corbels were $8/each!).

Anyway, so here's the final product :)

Before... blank wall and "catch all" on the counter:

And after!

(notice the paint chip taped to the cabinet below - that's "Horseradish" and how it will look with everything!)

I'm still working on tweaking what's up on the shelf and the placement of everything, but so far, so good! And due to the placement of the studs on the wall, and me wanting everything "even Steven" on both sides, we ended up with 2 corbels in the middle of the shelf instead of 1, but I think it works! And disregard the ugly beat up switch plates, etc. Those will be history eventually, swapped out with something nicer once we figure out our backsplash!