Week of Kitchen Renovations: Spice Rack

The spice rack that we have serves both function and fashion. Most people who walk in notice it immediately and compliment it. I love that our spices are always at an arm’s reach and that the shelf and spices provide a splash of color in the kitchen. Sometimes it does take a few guesses to find the correct spice, but it’s a fun little game to see who can find the cinnamon first. I’m getting pretty good at it, but still struggle finding the cayenne vs paprika vs chili powder vs smoked paprika. It’s a good thing I wrote on the bottom of the spice jars to indicate which spice is in the jar!

Hubby and I actually got this idea from our old kitchen, as you can see in some of the before pics, there was a white strip of wood on the laminate backsplash. Logistically this is needed because behind that laminate, there is subway tiling. So the shelf is placed where the subway tiling meets the plaster walls. If you didn’t have the shelf, it would look bizarre. Here is a side shot of the shelf to show you what I’m talking about.

The white strip of wood was too small to be anything useful, so we knew that with the kitchen renovation, we wanted to install a shelf that could hold things. We made this shelf one afternoon. I didn’t take and pictures during the process, but hopefully I can fully describe how we did it.

First we headed to the home improvement store and bought some trim pieces. The first piece is just a 1.5″ strip of pine. The second is a piece of trim. It has and half round shape to it’s cross section. I drew a fun little picture to better show what the wood looked like.

The first thing I did was prime the wood and paint the first coat of black paint. Then I sanded the wood down prior to installing the shelf. Hubby pre drilled holes into the flat piece of wood about every 10 inches. Then he screwed that piece of wood onto the wall using 2″ screws. So at that point, we had a flat shelf with visible screw heads showing.

Next we attached the trim piece by holding it such that the flat part of the trim was flush with the flat wood already attached to the wall. This increased the depth of the shelf. Hubby used finishing nails to attach the trim portion of the shelf to the flat part.

Next, we sanded the entire shelf on the top just to ensure that the seam between the flat wood and the trim was not obvious. Lastly, I added another coat of black paint to the entire shelf. At the time, we didn’t have a backsplash and we hadn’t painted the walls, so I could be a bit sloppy with my painting. You can see the seam in this picture because there was some plaster work done after the final paint coat went on.

Now that the shelving was installed, I had to fill the spice jars. I ordered 60 spice jars from Pottery Barn. They weren’t the cheapest spice jars, but they fit perfectly since they have a 2×2″ footprint. I used a Sharpie pen to write on the bottom of each jar prior to filling it. I then used a small spice funnel to fill the spice jars with a variety of spices. Over by the sink, I filled the spice jars with various sprinkles.

I wanted to show off the fun red dual timer that Hubby’s mom got for me for Christmas 2008. I love it!

I hope these instructions make sense, but if you have questions, feel free to email me with questions and I can try to clarify things.

Check out my Week of Kitchen Renovations here.