Black White and Wood Kitchen with Faux Floating Shelves

Friends! We have a new kitchen update! We’ve been slowly working on our kitchen as we have time and funds every since we moved in to our home, and we recently just made a huge (yet miraculously inexpensive) leap forward. Our industrial/boho style kitchen now has faux floating shelving! Even more exciting is after we finished the updates I was reading that a black white and wood kitchen with faux floating shelves look is apparently predicted to boom in popularity this coming year. That means for once in my life there’s a possibility I’m ahead of a trend (instead of six years behind, lol).

Black White and Wood Kitchen with Faux Floating Shelves

Okay, so of course I’m obviously at least six years behind on the whole open shelving look. It took me this long for a variety of reasons, including cost and not having the time. But the biggest reason it took me so long to jump on the open shelving wagon is because I was afraid it might not work for us. I didn’t want some of the stuff I was stashing in my cabinets on display because they were the furthest thing from attractive, and I wasn’t sure where I would put them and how I would store them.

After years of admiring the whole open shelving look on Pinterest and reading pro’s and cons, and after months of deliberation and staring at our current kitchen situation while planted on the sofa nursing our baby I finally decided I may be able to pull it off. There was only one way to know for sure though, and that was to just do it.

The whole process took about two weeks. My husband (a carpenter and master woodworker) was given some wood scraps for free, and so he pieced them together to make the boards. He’s so good at what he does that you cannot tell they aren’t solid, one piece boards unless you look very closely at the ends.

We got the brackets off of Amazon, and instead of installing them on the underneath side of the shelving, we installed them on the top part so they would be a bit more hidden. I did this because even though I like the look of the brackets I didn’t want them to be too obvious. I was afraid if they were on the underneath side they would make the look appear too cluttered since the kitchen is small. Note, if you get these brackets and do this look you’ll need some extra brackets as they are not quite as strong this way.

The day the shelves went up was super exciting, and it was actually a little emotional. So a backstory is due in order for you to understand why! We used to be a family of 7 (we’re now a family of 8) living in less than 1000 square ft of space. For 12 years we were a growing family in a small home, and it was very difficult. In our previous home in the Midwest the kitchen was on of the biggest rooms of the house, however it was so poorly designed and lain out, plus it had other issues, and it was a constant source of frustration and even kitchen accidents for me (burns, cuts, smashed fingers and even a couple head injuries-it was a complicated kitchen).

This kitchen in our new home was/is professionally designed, and even though it is small it’s always been so much easier to work around in, and it’s been wonderful to be able to make renovations and replacements to it along the way. The open shelving was a big step, and a look I have loved for so long, so when they were complete and I stepped back and got my first look my eye’s welled with tears!

Check out the before (when we moved here), during renovations and after!

Although I am still working on getting the styling just right, I’m super happy with the overall look and how they have turned out! A major bonus I did NOT at all expect to come with these shelves was more storage space than I previously had. I actually have room to spare! Of course I’m still working on the art of shelfie styling, I’ll post more about that as I refine the look sometime soon!

Read about our previous kitchen updates HERE. Learn about my small kitchen organization tips and video series HERE. See all of my kitchen related posts HERE.

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