The Naked Wall

Today I have thoughts of wall displays in my head. You see, the far wall in my kitchen is as naked as a newborn, and needs some serious help. Sorry if the this blog's title misled you to think that this post would be a little more "exciting", but I am still in home improvement mode. I posted a couple of these yesterday, but let's look at the evolution of that end of the kitchen.

From old and yucky:

To mass destruction:

To new and clean. . . but naked:

I have been trying to figure out for a while what needs to be put in for this part of the kitchen to feel a little more cute and homey. Aside from a wall display, I definitely need a window treatment of some kind because the window is rather bare. I am going to try to DIY some roman shades with the help of my mom one of these weeks. I'm picturing them in a light and airy fabric so that I can still take advantage of all the beautiful natural light we have thanks to tearing down the awnings. Something like this only not so patterned:

I would also LOVE a new light fixture in this room; something sleek and modern, but relatively simple since it is a small space. Try googling "modern light fixtures" and see if you get as excited as me.

One that caught my eye right away was this Infiore model by Estiluz:

This is just inspiration for now though, because Infiore is a designer light fixture made by some design company in Spain. I don't know what the price is because it isn't listed on the website, but I'm going to speculate that it would cost more than a brand new stove. As I mentioned before, I won't be buying any high-end investment pieces for this house. I will keep my eye out for cheaper variations of the light fixture though it isn't a big deal if the current fixture ends up staying. For now, I can dream of what my kitchen would look like with this stuff:

 

Not bad eh? Ikea does have this light called Fillsta, but I'm not sold on it:

It is $39.99 though, so maybe worth some consideration.

I also want to add something to the wall. I thought about some artwork, but I'm not sure what I want and there is still budget to consider. I like the idea of picture frames, but I want it to be a little more interesting than that.

I was recently inspired by someone on a message board who was working with an old type case as a display piece. According to The Old Printing Shop of London website, type cases were manufactured from around 1890 to the 1960s. They are wooden trays divided into sections to hold the various letters of a typeface; hence the terms upper and lower case letters. Since they are obsolete, they are sold rather inexpensively and are commonly used as shadow boxes for figurine collections. I don't want to use one as a shadow box though. I am drawing inspiration from the message board, which drew inspiration from this Ali Edwards blog post. 

I went ahead and found one on eBay for less than $20 including shipping and it arrived last week:

 It was rather dusty but otherwise in perfect condition. I guess the typeface letters were heavy so these cases were always made very well; that and back then, things were actually made to last. I cleaned it off, primed it, and painted it white with semi-gloss paint:

I plan to fill it with photos and a few embellishments and hang it on the naked wall. I am trying to decide what kind of photos to use. They will be photos of the kids and our family in general, but I don't know if I want to do regular color, black and white, diluted colors, or sepia tones. I could go really funky and do an alternative color even. Here are a few examples that I am trying to picture in the white type case on my orange wall:

Hmmm. . .  decisions, decisions.

 Maybe I'll have a few of each printed to test them out first if I can't decide.

In addition to the case drawer I want to put up a vinyl wall quote and maybe put a few white frames to both sides of the type case to lengthen the display. Something along these lines:

That is the plan that was in my head and is now documented here in my blog. This is not a big project, but something I feel is worth putting a little time into.

Feel free to give feedback with encouragement, critiques, or alternative suggestions if you have them!