nesting | shelving pinspiration

when i was back in north carolina for a weekend and having dinner with my dad, he rattled off some mind blowing statistic that the average american home is something like 2,100 square feet.

right. in my fucking dreams.

the fadel household? try 723 square feet. "welcome," says, new york.

i've quickly learned to make the most of such tiny cozy spaces by thinking up. read: shelves.

all images via

our living room has a nook of useless corner wall space that i'm going to use for book storage. (side note: am i the only one still buying actual books?) so, like the bottom left photo, i'm going to do cheap white shelves in that nook but spray paint the braces and brackets gold. and before you think it, i know. i know. enough with the gold, already! but, it's just so chic and an unexpected pop in an otherwise boring interior situation. i mean, they're shelves. how exciting can they really get?  
we also need some serious help in the kitchen. we don't have a pantry- again, welcome to new york- but we have a shit ton of food to store in our cabinets. so, i'm going with two stainless steel shelves to house our white plates and platters and various glass vases. i'm also planning on purchasing a bunch of cheap glass jars from ikea to store our non-perishables like the bottom right photo. i am just having a hard time deciding on wether to do a solid metal shelf or to go with a more commercial look like the gapped shelves in the bottom middle photo. i will not be spray painting these gold, thankyouverymuch.

so, basically, i'm a shelving copycat. but a tiny brooklyn apartment has to do what a tiny brooklyn apartment has gotta do. i'm actually hanging these shelves tomorrow when julie comes over to drink wine and christen casa de el fadels. she's bringing her big bad intimidating drill with her which could be bad news for our sheetrock. or is it dry wall? who cares.

i'll post an update sometime next week barring that i don't tear our walls down and get us evicted.