Welcome again to Saturday Morning Home Repair blogging, where we talk about fixing houses, repairing previous owner's errors (AKA Teh Stupid), and fixing them up. An ad hoc cadre of building professionals and gifted amateurs attempt to answer questions that arise from raiders, and offer encouragement and advice for those inclined to do things for themselves, if they can. We all do a lot of things, collectively, and can probably help out with insights from our vast experience.
Or at least fake it well enough to fool inspectors.
I officially have too much kitchen stuff, perhaps close to the hoarding level. Then again, I actually use everything I have at one point or another. I've worked in a number of kitchens professionally over the years, and a now-defunct store called Kitchen Etc. Discounts on neat stuff can be really dangerous, especially when it comes to storing all that stuff.
On past the Orange Warp Zone...
This was a galley kitchen at one point, with the stove in the corner by the window. The second floor (which has the same layout) still has the stove plug there; the true stupidity of this is the kitchen itself, as the central room in the house, is 17' x 14' - 238 square feet! Why they put an electric stove in the corner of a galley kitchen....not going to guess, the mind reels.
For perspective, it's 8 feet from doorway to back wall, and 14" from doorway to left wall. Tons of empty, wasted space in a house with virtually no closets. Just before buying the house, I scored some cabinets from a belly-up company (anyone remember late 2008?), and even though they didn't match the existing ones in the house, I needed the storage.
That cabinet is 8 feet tall, and yes, slightly tilted back. The baseboard juts out a hair further than the chair rail, and I still had to secure it to studs. I could have notched the cabinet for both, but removing either was a no-go; doing so would have disturbed the plaster far to much for comfort. In the end, I think the slope of the shelves towards the wall is 2 or 3 degrees; not overly noticeable until I put up the next cabinet, and makes it less likely a bottle of cooking wine or oil will slip off and smash on the floor.
Between the cabinet and wall is a piece of 8 ft melamine board attached directly to the wall with hinges. Add a handle and a magnetic clasp...and we now call it a broom closet.
That silver thing is and over-the-door hanger that I've always hated, and would never use on a door again. The clips that go over the door mess up the top of the door frame, and will only hold as much weight as the door itself can bear. So, a hacksaw to the doorclips (where the black tape now is), brute force bending, add a few screws with washers....and viola, a broom closet!
Add the next cabinet with the top even with the first, then some shelves at the end for books. The shelves were originally part of a cheap, free-standing bookcase I really didn't have a place for anymore. A few vertical shelf rails and board trimming, and a new home was born for way too many cookbooks. The shelf brackets themselves are actually shorter than the boards themselves; to prevent them from slipping off, I drilled partially through the underside of the board where the bracket ends, and has a little nub sticking up. The nub sits in the hole, and they haven't slipped in almost four years.
A coat of white enamel paint on the raw board facing the door, and now all I need is cabinet doors on the first cabinet that match the rest of the kitchen - they should nicely hide the slant of the 8 foot cabinet at first glance. Once I find the same style large enough for this cabinet, I have 3 others that also need doors - and I'm pretty sure that 8, 4-ft cabinet doors will dent the wallet.
...and a final shot of the other side of the pantry. With pasta, sauce, soup, canned veggies...those cabinets are overflowing, literally to the ceiling. And although the deep fryer is rarely used, loaded sweet potato nachos totally rock on New Year's Eve!
And since we're starting a new year, I was curious if anyone wanted to share some dum-dums from 2012. We're all human, we all err, and laughter is the ONLY medicine when you have to redo something!