It’s been a cold couple of weeks for us here in SC! It hasn’t gotten out of the 30s for a couple of days, which is not normal for us; it’s been windy, too. The high today is 32 with wind gusts up to 40 mph! What happened to our average February temperature of 60?! I’m staying warm on the couch snuggled under a blanket, two little balls of fluffy and fuzzy cuteness curled up next to me, with a bowl of warm tomato soup, my new favorite lunch for the past few weeks during this super cold weather. Now that you have a mental image, let’s get down to business.
The ‘backsplash’ behind our sink is just a big piece of clear plastic – it’s hideous, and I can’t wait to one day replace it with white subway tile…but for now, it does the job. But it just seemed to be missing something – in the absence of a big, pretty window or a real backsplash, it just looks dark and boring.
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| If you look closely, you can see the plastic ‘backsplash’ over the sink. |
I had decided that in the absence of a new backsplash, a little shelf over the sink would provide a place for a few cute jars, cups, and add a pop of color. Then, while picking up some groceries at Sam’s one day last spring, I stopped to flip through a few magazines and came across this photo from an old Freshstyle magazine (I tried for over 15 minutes to find a link to this photo or the article online but couldn’t locate one, so this grainy photo from my phone is the best I’ve got). And my mind was made up. Make a shelf, I would (said in my best Yoda voice, of course!)!
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| I loved the pitcher with flowers in it, too! |
To get started on the shelf, I sawed a small fence picket that happened to be in the scrap wood stack in our garage down to fit flush between the cabinets above the sink. We don’t have a power saw, so it took a few minutes’ worth of manpower for me to saw all the way through. After a quick sanding, I painted it white, grabbed a couple of corner braces and some screws, and took it all inside for the Mister to hang it up for me.
On a different (but related!) note, our faucet was always ugly. It worked fine, though, so we lived with it – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! But then one day last January, it started to leak (Confession: This entire project was completed about a year ago…). I was so excited! The Mister tried tightening some things under the sink, but it just kept dripping…and then it sort of stopped working altogether.
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| I never understood the funky little gadget on this faucet. It was convenient (you could rotate it and aim the water all around the sink) but it was just weird. |
…So we bought a new one! It’s not what I had in mind for a new faucet, but we had received a gift card from Lowe’s for Christmas and decided to go with a faucet that the gift card would cover…and this was the one! It looks waaay better than the old one, though, so it’s definitely an improvement.
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| Bright and shiny and new! |
The Mister got started by putting in the faucet, then moved on to the shelf, securing it to the cabinets with a single corner brace on each side. The fence piece was only about 3″ wide, which translates into just the right depth to be able to fit a few items on the shelf without blocking out too much of the light.
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| My favorite handyman, hard at work. |
As soon as the shelf was in place, I grabbed a few cute mini jars that had been my grandmother’s, a recipe card holder that I made as a kid tagging along to Boy Scouts when my dad was my brothers’ troop leader, and a cute yellow mini pitcher, which all look just darlin’ hanging out above the sink! The jars now keep sugar, yeast (for pizza night!) and hot chocolate mix (in the winter) and lemonade mix (in the summer) within easy reach so I don’t have to run to the pantry each time I need them. Since I used scrap wood and paint we already had, the only cost was the braces, which cost under $3. Yay!
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| So pretty! |
We also got a new dishwasher that weekend – the last of the ugly, old appliances that came with the house to be upgraded to stainless steel – and then tried to put it in ourselves. We weren’t confident with our handiwork, though, so we called in a professional the next day.
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| Trying to figure out whether the dishwasher was properly installed… |
So it was a major weekend for changes in the kitchen! Just about everything got a facelift – including the kitchen sink! 🙂