Before & After: Cookbook Display Goes Front-Facing

My kitchen is spacious by city apartment standards, but really lacks in storage. While an inexpensive tower shelf stored my cookbooks just fine, I found that I wasn’t particularly inspired to use them, and the positioning partially blocked doorway. So I decided to break out my favorites and display them with some reverence… by facing them forward.

You may have already spied these cookbook shelves in my January Cure party post. Inspired by this post on The Kitchn, I set out to recreate the look in my home. It was really simple: I used four of the 21-inch RIBBA picture ledges from IKEA and installed them with anchors and screws specifically for drywall.

Each shelf’s load is 11 pounds, which gives wiggle room for three average-sized cookbooks. You can’t put the giant tomes on here anyhow, since the ledge is only a couple of inches deep.

Sure, it only holds a limited few (my others are shelved elsewhere), but I like to think of it as a rotating collection. They attract attention, and welcome people to pick them up and browse, just like in the bookstore. I find that I am referencing them more often, since I don’t have to unstack five books to grab the one at the bottom. Plus, my doorway is much less obstructed.

Would you display cookbooks facing outward?