No, we still haven’t gotten around to hanging pictures or wall art, but we did finally manage to hang the pot rack and knife holder, immediately making the kitchen way more storage-friendly.

I’ve been very leery of hanging our pots and pans out in the open, because I’ve just never been particularly fond of the aesthetic even when the cookware is all shiny and nice, and our stuff is a rather old and motley-looking bunch. But I can’t deny the organizational appeal, since I’ve spent far too much time crouched in front of the pot/pan cabinet cursing as I attempt to pull out the pot I need, which is invariably behind and/or under every other item in the cabinet. I had originally thought that we could hang the cookware Julia Child-style on the wall, but we’ve decided that we want to put open shelves on the one spot where that would made sense.

So I ordered the cheapest pot rack I could find, and we hung it this weekend. We doubled over the chains on the first try, but that left the pans hanging at my eye-level, which kinda defeats the purpose of an open kitchen.

We finally ended up getting rid of the chains entirely and hanging the rack hooks directly from the ceiling hooks. This means I have to be a little more coordinated when hanging the pans, but I can still reach them just fine. We weren’t planning on hanging any cast iron cookware anyway, so my weak shoulder girdles can handle the load of anything that we’d be hanging up there.

And surprisingly I actually am really liking the look. We may eventually make our own rack out of wood and brass since we’re slowly moving toward brass details elsewhere in the kitchen and dining room, but for now, even with the beat up cookware, it really isn’t the eyesore I was expecting at all.

Since I’m talking about hanging stuff, we ended up sticking the magnetic knife holder on the side of the refrigerator. It was seriously the only place to put it. It actually  makes a lot of sense from a functional point of view, since our cutting boards spend their free time leaning against the refrigerator right below the knife holder, and we do most of our cutting on the counter right there anyway.

As you may have gathered from the pictures, we still haven’t gotten around to painting the kitchen walls. who knows, maybe we’ll get to it before summer is over. Taking pictures of the pot rack really highlights the glossy paint on the kitchen ceiling though, which makes my eye twitch with hate ever time I see it. Seriously, if you need your ceiling to be extra wipeable then you really should be rethinking your cooking habits. I honestly don’t really see us getting around to ceiling paint at any point in 2011, but if my eye keeps twitching it may just make its way onto the todo list after all.