You know you are starting to crave spring and that you are feeling a bit stir crazy when the sudden urge to drive 30 miles to the nearest IKEA for Kitchen Storage becomes an obsession that you can’t let go of! Or when you suddenly decide that NOTHING is allowed to live on the kitchen counter anymore because everything that lives there is bugging you. Not to mention it’s all making you that much less likely to clean the counters because it requires that you move those things in order to clean the counters well. Sigh..enter 2 hours fabulous hours at the happiest place on earth…IKEA, sweet, sweet IKEA. It is an organizational freak’s dream come true, am I right? Although, I after yet another grueling experience with Monster Mash, in an overcrowded and dizzyingly large warehouse store, I once again had to fly through the lower level (where most of the goodness that is IKEA happens to live) and set off from the store with only a few items in tow. Boo to cranky toddlers who don’t let their crazy mommy’s enjoy warehouse shopping, do you hear me friends…Boo to the Hoo. But anyhoo, I digress… So I saw this image one day while surfing around online, and I must confess this image is the spark that lit a kitchen storage fire under my tush (spelling? no clue)! Isn’t it fab? And so it got me thinking…wouldn’t it be amazing to get the stuff on my counters up and off and into wire storage baskets basically making the “no counter living” rule a possibility and cleaning that much more of an option…but most importantly allowing everyday kitchen items to look pretty as though they are on display! Yahoo, count me in!
And so, off to IKEA we drove, monster mash in tow (mistake number 1). It just so happens that Ikea has a large selection of incredible storage and organizational product lines that are similar to the inspiration photo, and I was planning on making out like bandit and majorly on the cheap, since their prices for this sort of stuff are incredible! No really…Incredible. Enter Bygel..one of IKEA’s hanging kitchen storage lines (they have another that I think starts with an A, but I can’t recall the exact name of it) with interchangeable pieces and items that suit most if not all of your kitchen storage needs..not to mention any of your other storage needs, in other rooms of your house..think outside the box here, I am sure you won’t regret it!
This bad boy cost a whopping $1.99. Yep, under $2 folks, can you believe it? This is a pretty heavy duty seeming industrial chic kind of towel bar. Perfect for my needs and the look I am going for here. There is no hardware included or putting together that needs to occur, nope..simply get some drywall screws, the 2” variety should more than do the trick, and hang these babies up.
Ok, since you have all been so sweet to me lately (you know who you are…and I heart you) I will share my easy hanging in a straight line of perfection technique. Yes that’s actually what it’s called, emkay? check it…
That’s right, so simple, blue painter’s tape! Most of the time you will find that your wall/ceiling line is not even or level..and in this case perhaps your cabinetry or backsplash line. This is entirely common, especially in older homes where you may have both uneven ceiling and windows and floor lines. eek..what’s a person to do? How do you even go about hanging something when you can’t hang something level for fear it will conflict drastically with your not so level line of windows, ceilings, floors etc.? It’s very simple. You choose the edge you need to match for the least amount of visual conflict, and in my case here, this happens to be my cabinetry since I will be placing these rods nearest to the bottom of my cabinets rather than the backsplash. This makes my under cabinet lighting a good point of reference. I pulled off a strip of tape that is at least a bit longer than my rod length and lined up a section with the bottom of my florescent light box. Then keeping my line of tape straight I simply pressed it down for the length of the strip. You can tell if you are crooked by evaluating any blips or bubbles along your tape strip. If you aren’t perfectly smooth, you are also not likely to be perfectly straight…but you can easily adjust (since the darn tape barely sticks to the wall anyhow) and get yourself straightened out in a jiff! If you are needing to hang something more than one tape strip in height from something, simply use the edge of your tape strip as your next line of reference and continue on stacking your strips until you reach the appropriate distance or height for hanging your piece! Easy peasy, no? Safety Tip Requirement: If you are working near electrical outlets or lines…be sure to shut your power down before you start drilling screws into your wall. Trust me, a zap like that isn’t worth the couple of seconds it will take you to walk outside or into your garage and shut the breakers down. If you are unsure as to how to go about this…I recommend to you, those fabulous Interwebs, after all if you are reading this, you are likely able to throw up a question search about turning power off in Google or Bing before continuing on in this televised programming. Be sure you use drywall screws to install so you are able to place things in your storage without as much risk of the screws working their way back out of your wall and crashing to the ground (or counter). Once you have your tape strip in place, decide where that line will fall on your item to be installed. For me, this was going to be the halfway point of my rod, in other words, the center of the rod should fall right on the bottom edge of the tape strip.
As you can see above, I used a crayon to make a mark in the center of the top opening since that gives me adequate visibility of where to place the screw without needing to mark up my wall, always a bonus…
When I am not pre-drilling for a screw, I will typically place the screw in the desired location and inside the rod bracket hole and give it a little tap with a hammer. Another little trick of mine when hanging things. I don’t hit it hard enough to go in beyond the first wrung of the spiral because you will be ruining the screws ability to carve it’s hold into the wall. So, just a tiny little tap so that it stays put a bit better while you are tying to drill it in!
Once you have the top screws in place on both sides, simply tear the tape away and get to fastening the bottom screws. No marks, no crooked hanging rods…just perfection!
This is the basket component for the Bygel collection, and perfect for my needs, also coming in at the very low cost of $1.99! This just needs to be unpackaged and hung on the rod. No installation here, just hang and done!
This even looks fabulous empty, does it not? Perhaps this is my obsessive mindset, envisioning all of the Storage Goodness soon to take place!
Look at that..salt and pepper up and off the counter! Plenty of room underneath this unit to function as needed when cooking and all of these typically messy things (pepper grinder) are now in this washable, removable bottomed basket. Yahhhhooooooo.
