Pinterest is an instant inspiration for me when my mind starts to get bored with the way a room is set up, when the Feng Shui just feels off, or when I’m blank of ideas and I need something I can re-create. I’m sure I have thousands, literally, of recipes, design ideas, and everything imaginable saved on my boards. Most of which are complete pipe dreams but I do actually make an effort to try to incorporate some of what I see into my home – and I do try most of those recipes too!
So in the wake of COVID trapping me in my home and forcing me to spend more time on Pinterest…(as if I needed an excuse)…I stumbled across this beauty of a Pin. I have one rule in shopping and design – if I can’t stop thinking about it then I’m buying or doing it. I fell completely in love with this picture and just how fresh and sweet it looked. I took a screen shot and went on about my day but I just couldn’t stop looking at the picture and thinking to myself that I could do that.
I’ll spare you all the anticipation – I did it! I have a wall that has 3 obnoxiously deep shelves on it that at the time seemed like a good idea, but after children have knocked into them and I realized I could never put a chair near the wall (head injuries) I realized I needed shallow shelves or something else entirely. When I saw this Pin I knew it would be a perfect replacement. The problem was this wasn’t something I could just buy – clearly this was something someone put together on their own.
We had just done a closet project awhile back so immediately I thought the wiring in the picture looked very similar to a closet organization shelf and figured I would start there. Home Depot has been my best friend these past few weeks, as I’m sure it has been for many others, and I was able to find two thin shelves that would work perfectly. We took them home and used an angle grinder to cut the shelf lip off so that it would be flush on the wall. I hated the white and wanted something that looked gritty and old. I was putting plants on this so I felt like it should have that outdoor dirty look right!? We bought quite a few spray cans of textured paint and went to work.
Let me tell you, my time management skills are top notch but when it comes to what I refer to as “weekend projects” or “day projects” at this point in my life I am generally super off! What was supposed to be a weekend project turned into almost a two week project. Painting the shelves wasn’t the problem. Painting took a couple days for the obvious reason that it needed to dry and we wanted to make sure the majority of the white was covered. The biggest problem I had was finding the baskets to put on it to hold the plants.
I searched Amazon and was able to find one basket here and another there but frankly I didn’t want to spend $60 in baskets! Even ordering online from Wal-Mart felt silly, why pay shipping? I tried my favorite escape in the world – Target – and as always they never let me down. I found a few cheap little baskets I could work with and stumbled across a gold mine when I found two metal “cubby” shelves on clearance for $10 a piece. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the before on this shelf but I was able to find one on the Target website for your viewing pleasure. Initially I was going to keep it as is – but since discovering the amazing angle grinder, I decided to chop that puppy up into 3 baskets which gave 6 additional cute little metal baskets! I would never have found something like this for the price I paid – feeling like a winner here.
Once I was done scavenging the outside world for baskets, we could finally get it up on the wall to see how it looked. I was instantly pleased! I’ve certainly had those moments where I thought in my head it would look great and then was disappointed with the end result. I’d been working on this for almost two weeks so I was really pulling for this to turn out. Once the baskets were up we ventured back out to Home Depot for some plants. Because they’ve been so busy lately, all the mature indoor plants were gone. Not to be stopped, I decided on some tulips, a baby indoor plant, a cactus, and even some lavender (which I have decided I will be buying another of). Terra cotta pots are super cheap as well and give a sweet clean look that I love. It was Carlos’ idea to hang pictures or things and I think it added an additional sweet touch to it. Bottom line we’re in love with it. I still have more plants to add – looking for a few plants with more bulk to them – but I’m happy this turned out to be such a great project. Looking forward to the next one!
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