The Starter Home: Kitchen Shelves, Milk Glass and a Vintage Grocery Sign Tutorial

I only have 3 more smallish sized projects to go and my kitchen will be officially finished, for now.

We tackled the last big one yesterday which was lighting. I have new recessed and pendant lighting. I can't wait to show you guys. I really am so lucky that my hubby has some serious handyman skills. My kitchen was an absolute mess though. Insulation and dust EVERYWHERE. I am still finding it.

My small starter home has 4 bedrooms. Not big bedrooms mind you but bedrooms all the same. There is our master, of course, and then 3 "kid" rooms. Each of these rooms can hold one child and could easily hold two. So theoretically my kitchen should be able to fit 5-8 people.

HA!

I remember when we first moved in, the space seemed so large. How would we ever fill it?

Well it isn't that hard to fill up empty space. What is difficult is using space efficiently to fit everything.

Especially in a starter home.

While scanning the web for inspiration on storage solutions that took zero to no floor space I found some awesome pictures.

Thus the idea for shelves was born.

www.kitchenbacksplashes.blogspot.com

I also fell in the love with the stacks of white dishes. I wanted to use the shelves to store my white serving/cooking dishes but I knew I wouldn't have enough to fill the shelves just yet. So I went to my local thrift store and searched for white. Well there wasn't that much and I only found 3 white pieces. I was NOT patient enough to keep coming back and searching so I just bought any piece I liked and knew I could bust out the trusty dusty spray paint.

I ended up doing about 4 coats to get the coverage I needed.

We purchased the shelving and brackets at Home Depot. We screwed the brackets into the studs and cut the shelving down to size. The shelves look great but the sides were not finished.

We bought veneer edging at Home Depot.

www.homedepot.com

Hold the edging up and cut it about 1/2 inch- 1 inch longer than you need.

Iron it on.

Use a utility knife to cut off any excess.

I was also inspired by this grocery sign. This is actually a real-life vintage grocery sign. Awesome antiques are few and far between in my neighborhood.

www.countryliving.com

So I decided to make my own. I had some left over MDF from a bookcase my hubby built. I primed it with a few coats of white paint. I then printed and cut out the letters for my sign. I used the font Franklin Gothic Medium in case you want one, too. I used my sewing ruler to give me a straight edge.

I traced the letters and I filled them in with paint.

I then used my orbital sander to age it up a bit. I also used a little bit of light stain around the edges and on a few random spots. I wiped on the stain and then immediately wiped it off. I did this until it built up to the color I wanted.

Here she is all vintage and what not.

And here are my beautiful shelves. I just Love them. All the things on the top shelf are thrift store finds that were either white to start with or spray painted. The bottom shelf is devoted to my actual cooking and serving wear. So it is a little empty right now. It will cost a little more than my $1 thrift store finds to fill it.