small change/big improvement

I already posted pictures of my kitchen for my little house tour but I recently made a huge change that has completely improved the whole room. I have a great little window in front of the sink that looks out over the yard. I love it but on either side was a bare wall. No cabinets or shelves - a complete waste of space. There's very little storage in this kitchen and I'm kind of a dish hoarder so last week I made open shelves.

It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this!

So much better, right? And it took some time but it was really not a ton of work. Basically, all I did was follow these steps:

1. Measure my wall for how long I wanted the shelves.
2. Go to Home Depot and have them cut some 2"x12" lumber per my measurements.
3. Buy brackets (I got these - they were $8 each).
4. Sanded the boards (I wish I had done this better but it was too much work - I'm lazy/impatient - and I also don't have a sander so I was doing this step by hand).
5. Painted the brackets and boards (I used Martha Stewart's Tailor's Chalk Semi-Gloss with primer).
6. Then David hung the brackets using heavy-duty anchor screws. The brackets came with some crummy anchors but we wanted them to be really sturdy and to hold more weight so he bought some better ones. Then he used 2 1/2 inch finishing nails on the top of the board to attach to the bracket so they wouldn't slide and to secure it even more.