New Floating Shelves in the Kitchen!

Hello and happy new year, friends! (Yes, it's already February, but I haven't posted here since December, soo...) You might remember that last time I shared some photos of our almost-complete kitchen, minus the floating shelves on either side of the microwave. Well I'm happy to say that we've made some good progress lately, and the shelves are finally installed! 

First of all, let me backtrack a bit before the reveal. The brackets we used were the Aksel shelf hardware from Shelfology. These things are pretty heavy-duty, so we could rest easy about the weight of the shelves and what we put on them. We installed the brackets prior to the backsplash - I'm not sure if there's actually a recommended method there, but to us it seemed easier than adding them after the backsplash. (Although it probably caused some frustration for the guy we hired to install the backsplash.)