Dining Room Shelves Update

Hello, everyone and happy Monday. Today we are giving you a dining room shelves update, but first I want to tell you what’s happening here this week.  Baby Girl will be my guest for a few days.  Her parents are both on business trips, and so we will have just the two of us for three whole days.  (Mike is also on a business trip.)  I hope I still know how to keep a 19 month old toddler occupied.   Thank goodness we live near the park, because when all else fails, there are always the swings!

We mentioned in this post that we are having shelves/cabinets built for both sides of the dining room fireplace.  Well, the design has been selected, the deposit has been made, and the shelves have been ordered.  They are being custom built by an Amish carpenter and should be ready for installation in mid-October.

Dining Room Shelves Option 1

Our designer, Debra Hupman of Creative Kitchens and Baths came up with two ideas.  I want the units to be only 15 inches deep.  That is the depth of the shelves and cabinets that we had built for the great room in our last house, and they functioned very well for us.  The design above shows a support half way across on all of the shelves.  Also, there is molding on the top that matches our crown molding.  Support is necessary when a shelf is longer than 36 inches so that the shelf won’t warp over time from the weight of what is on it. (Ignore the pencil scratches.  We were discussing lighting.)

Dining Room Shelves Option 2

This second design for our dining room shelves is the one we selected.  Instead of having a support in the middle of each shelf, the support is underneath with the addition of wood that runs the length of the shelf.  You can see in the drawings that the shelves are thicker in this design than in the previous design.  Also, there is no molding at the top.  I felt the molding on the other layout competed with the crown molding on the wall.  This is a cleaner look.  The cabinets will be Shaker style like the cabinets in the rest of our house.

Lighting

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Now we have to decide about lighting.  Do we want to add a light at the top of each shelf to shine down on the shelves, or do we want to skip this step?

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We need to make this decision about our dining room shelves so that an electrician can pull up a wire before the shelves are installed.  We would love your input on this.  Just leave a comment below.  On the agenda for this week is ordering gas fireplace logs for the fireplace.  Thankfully, the previous owner already had a gas line installed there, and we had it checked last week by a plumber to make sure it is in good condition.  Since we eat most of our evening meals in the dining room, it will be cozier to have a fire while we are eating but yet, we can turn it off when we leave the room for the evening.  I like that safety feature.

Thank you so much for spending part of your Monday with us.  Have a wonderfu

Take care.