I love our kitchen, but it is small. This is why I’m on a mission to squeeze as much storage space out of this room as possible! I’ve been pondering for a while what to do with the empty wall on the right of the picture above. At first I toyed with the idea of a chalkboard, but dismissed it because it isn’t that practical, really. (And who is going to clean the chalk dust? Exactly.) Then I decided to put open shelves there. They’d add visual interest, plus I’d be able to put away the coffee boxes and free up some countertop space again. I ordered bamboo glulam planels. It’s a very sturdy material for one, and we already have a lot of bamboo items in our kitchen so it makes sense to continue the theme. I ordered the glulam from Bauhaus. Unfortunately the panels had a few dents when it arrived. Phil and I decided we’d work with them anyway, since the dents aren’t so big as to be immediately noticable.We sanded down the panels a bit, and then used boiled linseed oil as a finish. The bamboo got somewhat darker, but the oil shows off the grain structure beautifully. We let it dry for approximately 24 hours in our bathroom, because that’s the easiest room the close off to a certain curious kitten. 😀Oscar didn’t mind as much. At least he got to inspect the brackets we picked up at the hardware store! We weren’t quite sure if the shiny surface of the brackets wouldn’t look too plastic, but on the other hand we both thought they were more visually interesting than the plain modern ones. Phil then got the idea to sand them to reduce the gloss.After that, we mounted them on the wall. We’re both not the DIY type, but with the new apartment we’re slowly trying out new things. The lower shelf went on the wall without a hitch, but I made a mistake with the measurements for the upper shelf. (As evidenced by the two visible screw anchors in the right side, coughcough.) Regardless, we’re very happy with our DIY shelves! We put our coffee supplies on the lower shelf so that they don’t clutter the countertops anymore. Phil wants to use the top shelf to display dried herbs from our herb garden in pretty glass jars, but until we actually buy these jars it will hold my tea cup and pot as well as our beautiful reusable coffee cups.