Constellations on My Kitchen Shelves

 Remember how I tried to improve my kitchen shelves by sewing fabric baskets to hide all the crap that we shove on them, but that just made me see how ugly the shelves just... ARE?

Laboring under the delusion that paint and wallpaper are cheap ways to spruce up a space, I decided to spruce up this particular kitchen space by painting and wallpapering it. 

Like, for REAL painting and wallpapering it. As in, not using whatever paint I happened to find in the garage, but deliberately shopping for and purchasing brand-new paint. Not "wallpapering" by decoupaging my favorite comics or Harry Potter paperbacks all over the shelves, but purchasing actual, legitimate, real-live wallpaper.

Will volunteered to assist me with taping off the shelves. Thank goodness for that kid!

I painted the trim around the shelves, permitted Matt to talk me down from the wallpaper of cartoon T-rexes eating tacos, and instead bought this constellation wallpaper, on account of my mid-life crisis has turned out to consist of taking up once again my childhood love of astronomy.

In retrospect, I wouldn't pay this much for wallpaper again. I underestimated the square footage of what I needed to cover, and so instead of having a nice, big surplus of wallpaper to use on other projects, I had thankfully enough wallpaper to cover the shelves, but only enough extra to cover a couple of tin cans, so I guess look forward to my upcoming tutorial on covering tin cans with wallpaper to use as utensil holders!

Also, as I was painting the trim, I noticed that the super old paneling on the kitchen walls is peeling away, so... that's cool, I guess.

ANYWAY, here are the shelves all nicely painted and wallpapered!

Pretend like you don't see any bubbles in that wallpaper, please. It's important that you do this for me. Instead, feel free to notice the peeling paneling below the shelves. What on earth am I supposed to do about that?!?

Next up, Matt has plans to build a roll-out shelf next to the refrigerator--something like this! His hobby is mixing cocktails, so he can put all of his bulky bottles of alcohol and mixers there instead of in the kitchen nook, and wouldn't it be absolutely wonderful if he could also fit some of the crap that we now toss on top of the refrigerator so I can't reach it? Even better, perhaps he could fit some of the things that I've thrown in those fabric storage baskets, so that there would be fewer baskets in the nook and you could actually see that expensive wallpaper!

I'm also toying with the idea of thrifting some fabric and putting up a curtain to block the view of the messy hallway from the kitchen, and the view of the messy kitchen from the hallway. It would involve putting a couple of holes in the expensive wallpaper that I JUST put up, though, and I'm afraid that it would look tacky, as well. I don't always have a clear visual idea ahead of time about what's going to look tacky or not...

What do you think, guys--are you on Team Curtain or Team View into the Messy Next Room?