Kitchen thangs: Using shelves when you're out of cabinets

My house is a little weird. I love my house, don't get me wrong, but there's a couple of weird things about it that I definitely want to improve. Like, the fact that my house has four bedrooms and a ton of closet space, but only one bathroom with no closet or vanity. And the fact that there's two decent-sized bedrooms upstairs and three closets, but absolutely no plumbing and no thermostat up there. And there's no dining room, which kind of sucks because it's super hard to entertain guests. The other weird thing about my house is the lack of cabinet space in my relatively small kitchen.

When I first took a tour of the house, I knew right off the bat that the kitchen would need the most work. The walls were a dirty white with only the tiniest of cabinets and a greasy, broken microwave. With a little TLC and creativity, we managed to make our kitchen a liiiittttle bit more practical AND pretty!

Can you guys actually see how much cabinet space I am lacking?

WTF?

Literally, all I have is two tiny cabinets in this kitchen. Why, you ask? I wish I had an answer.

Regardless, Brian and I wanted to add more storage space without completely replacing the cabinets. We're all about not spending money now that we have so many more bills to pay. The idea that I came up with was simple: add a couple of shelves.

Brian and I collect glasses and tumblers, so we actually we were excited to put a shelf up and display them. In our old apartment, they were stored in a cabinet where nobody could see them in all their glory. 

We purchased this shelf in an oak wood finish from Home Depot for like, $8, and used three brackets to ensure that the shelf stays in the wall. Remember, glasses are light, but if you're storing like 20+ glasses, they're going to be heavy. Also remember to use a stud finder and long, sturdy screws when putting shelves up; if you're only drilling into sheet rock, the shelf won't stay up for very long. If you have no choice but to drill your brackets into sheet rock, make sure that you use anchors. If you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, drop me a line in the comments and I'll explain!

A couple of other things we did to improve our kitchen included painting the walls (we used Behr's Feng Shui, which can be found at Home Depot, and eggshell white), and hanging up Christmas lights (you guys will learn that I'm a huge fan of Christmas lights and putting them everywhere). We put some stuff on the counter tops because we needed more storage space (including that beautiful, totally non-matching little shelf unit that I found while thrifting at Savers). 

Obsessions: Christmas lights and incense burning 24/7.

My kitchen isn't finished yet; I'll be adding more shelves and I'm also working on a coffee bar, among some other things, but I thought I'd use some Blogging Holly real estate to tell you about the power of a little paint and some shelves when you're in need of storage. Remember, guys: you don't have to spend a fortune and tear apart an entire room to make it more appealing. A little TLC really goes a long way!

Let me know about your home improvement projects. Leave a message in the comments and let's inspire each other! ;)