Posts Tagged: Cabinets

22
Jul 09

Spice Rack

As any avid cook knows, there’s no good place to store your herbs and spices. It seems like we’re limited to fumbling through a lazy susan or wasting good cabinet space on bottles that are only three inches high. I’ve always kept my spices on a shelf above the stove, but steam makes some of them clump. After we remodeled our kitchen, we tried to come up with a better way to organize and store our essential flavorings. Since this is where we do the cooking, we thought this should be where we keep the herbs and spices:

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10
Jul 09

Kitchen Remodel 10: Finished

As you know from the last update, we encountered some unexpected grief from the kitchen sink. Once we got all of that sorted out, my wife and I were able to turn our focus back to finishing the room. We’ve been very busy with work and family lately, so we haven’t had more than a day or two where we could devote our attention to the house. I managed to get a little carpentry done after work, including building these 18″ deep shelves for the pantry:

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The pantry space is over three feet deep. We figured there was no reason to install such deep shelves, as we wouldn’t be able to reach anything in the back. And we couldn’t treat it like a walk-in pantry with shallow shelves, because the space is only two feet wide. My wife balked at the idea of putting in a false backing, since we’d essentially be throwing away good storage space in an otherwise small room. She recommended that we put shelves in the back for things we seldom use (specialty appliances and seasonal china), and build a movable pantry to maximize the volume of the space. This solution is actually closer to her original design, except that the pantry moves on wheels instead of on expensive, heavy-duty slide rails.

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15
Jun 09

Kitchen Remodel 7: Counters & Appliances

Last week was very busy for us. As you know, the cabinet people came on Tuesday. We worked like crazy on Wednesday to finish the ceiling and the baseboards, but we didn’t manage to get enough paint on the wood on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning, the new refrigerator and range hood were delivered:

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It fits pretty well into the custom cabinet space. The delivery guys had to take the doors off the fridge to get it into the house, and the right door sags a little since they reinstalled it. I’ll raise it up when I have some spare time.

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9
Jun 09

Kitchen Remodel 6: Cabinets

The cabinets were installed yesterday. We think they look pretty good:

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That light fixture ended up looking great in that space.

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1
Jun 09

Kitchen Remodel 4: The Transformation

After last weekend, we needed to take a couple of days off. We didn’t do much to the kitchen after work, but the electrician completed most of the wiring. He’ll finish up this week. I did manage to get a little mud work done on the ceiling and we were able to further repair the walls (and the new damage done by the electrician) before the weekend. Most importantly, we got the ceiling painted on Friday night:

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We sanded prior to painting, hence the dust.

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26
May 09

Kitchen Remodel 3: Making Progress

After last week’s work, I started stressing about how to frame the rear wall in a way that would be either inconspicuous or elegant. In other words, my options were to try to hide the laundry area or to accentuate it. I actually lost sleep about it. I wasn’t happy with either option, and I felt relieved when my wife emailed me on Tuesday to say she’d figured out what she wants. She put together a portfolio of kitchen images that had design concepts she liked, and she drew out this design for our rear wall:

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It’s a blessing and a curse.

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7
May 09

Kitchen Remodel 1: The Plan

Well, we just put down half of the money for our new cabinets and counter tops, so the kitchen remodel has become a reality. They’re scheduled to install them in the first week of July, so that gives us a month and a half to get the room ready. It seems like every previous owner has tried to jazz up the space with new paint, knobs or fixtures, but no one put any serious time or money into modernizing the room. Here’s how it looks:

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As usual, everything looks decent in the picture, but a closer inspection reveals antiquated cabinets and shoddy craftsmanship.

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