It's Great To Be Home

Sleek + Sophisticated: Floating Shelves

Whether our next kitchen is in a house we live in or a house we flip, I’ve made a resolution that our kitchen is going to have open shelving of some kind.

Right now I’m kind of obsessed with floating shelves, as opposed to just glass-fronted cabinets or open shelving. They always look crisp, clean and sophisticated, don’t you think? And the best part is that they work in every style of kitchen and they’re more affordable than regular cabinetry.

For me, the perfect combination would be a ton of closed storage and a few floating shelves sprinkled in for either display or those dishes and glasses that we use every day. {Like that phenomenal kitchen from last week!}

Are you ready to feast your eyes on some scrumptious kitchens?

First, a few stainless steel beauties . . .

{ Amoroso Design }

{ Houzz }

{ Phoebe Howard via Decor Pad }

{ Amoroso Design }

I have to admit that dark-stained wood is my favorite look:

{ Apartment Therapy – how cool are those sliding glass panels? }

{ Angie Hranowsky }

Classic white is always in style and allows the shelving to blend into the background:

{ Lonny }

{ Decor Pad }

{ Angie Hranowsky }

{ Anne Coyle via Decor Pad }

{ Houzz }

{ Elle Decor via MadeByGirl }

Floating shelves in natural wood tones give a beachy, understated look:

{ House of Turquoise }

{ Decor Pad }

And floating shelves are so cool when they span a corner, don’t you think?

{ Samantha Pynn via Decor Pad }

{ Anne Turner Carroll via Decor Pad }

{ Pal + Smith }

Would you ever rock a set of floating shelves in your kitchen? Keeping them clutter-free would be a total pain, but do you think the sacrifice is worth it?

Riding The Subway (Tile)

As you may have realized by now, I have an obsession with white kitchens. Surely I’m not alone on this one – they’re fresh, clean, classic . . . I could go on forever.

Due to my obsession, I knew that our remodeled kitchen was going to have gorgeous white cabinets. This posed a bit of a dilemma – you see, I also have an obsession with white subway tile.

What do to? Would the white cabinets and white backsplash be too much? When we were planning our kitchen, I scoured the web for pictures of this combination and found some winners:

Definitely not too much – the kitchens in those designer photos look dynamite. But what about in our kitchen – the kitchen that looks right into our den with all of that awesome white paneling? Would white cabinets, white subway tile, and white paneling look crazy?

In the end, we decided that it might look crazy. Maybe it wouldn’t have – if we ever move, maybe we’ll pull the trigger on our next kitchen. But for this kitchen, we decided to go for the best of both worlds – we chose a beautiful glass tile that combined the lovely clean lines of subway tile with a gorgeous, mossy green finish.