A Cupboard Facelift

When I designed the kitchen, I put in a couple of open shelves for a break from the monotony of all. those. cupboards. And I thought it would be nice if I could find a way to decorate them so they weren't part of the sea of brown we've got going on. Something like when people wallpaper the inside of their wardrobes or closets with a bright or fun wallpaper.

I even picked up a roll or two of nice wallpapers when I saw them. But I didn't want to commit (or put in the work) of actually wallpapering the back of the cupboards. It's so permanent. And hard to undo. (Because everything, at some point, needs to be undone.)

Then I thought of an idea. Troy came home with about a dozen sheets of some type of plastic covered foam board from work one day. They were ad boards that were supposed to go up in the store, but they were sent all the wrong sizes for their frames! You've seen them on the blog when I've used them as blocking boards.

I decided I would cut one to size:

and cover it with paper. I narrowed it down to two choices:

and decided to go with the strawberries. A little softer, less busy, and too cute to resist.

I wrapped it tight around the foam board and taped it down:

Then I just had to empty the shelves, remove them, and slip the covered foam board into the back of the opening. The shelves are narrower than the frame and there was plenty of room behind them for the thickness of the foam board.

So the upper shelf went from this:

to this:

It has the added benefit of covering up the mounting screws that were visible (you can see them plainly in the "before" picture above):

For the open shelves in the island, one roll of wallpaper wasn't wide enough so I had to make a seam. Since I was using painters' tape, I just taped it in a few places on the front, making sure to match the pattern, and then ran a length of tape along the seam on the back side. Then I removed the tape from the front, et voila:

you can hardly see it even if you do look close.

So the island shelves went from this:

to this:

And from the right angle, you can see both shelves with their cheery backgrounds.

Total time: about an hour. And so re-doable and un-doable it's not funny. It would be a great trick in cupboards with doors too. A nice surprise inside. (Especially if the inside condition isn't that great.) I'm sure a good sturdy cardboard would work as well as the foam board. It's not like there's a lot of stress on it.

Meanwhile I am enjoying my little project, finished and off the "do it someday" list.