Doesn’t it always seem that there’s just not enough storage in any house? We could move into a house that was nothing but closets and shelves, and we’d wish there were closets inside the closets. I’ve added shelves to the laundry room, both bedroom closets, and the basement. I’ve put up shelving in the garage. I added shelves to our back entry-way (I think Sarah calls it a mud room). I installed lots of shelves in the storage room under the stairs that lead to the second floor. Beyond all this, we still need more storage space. There’s always been one room I dare not touch. The kitchen. See, all the places I put all that shelving… it didn’t matter. Drill some holes, put up some shelves, thump your chest, watch football. The kitchen, though, is a high traffic area. That place needs to stay pretty in order to keep the wife happy and, in turn, keep the house happy. One particular wall in the kitchen has been an eyesore of wasted space since the day we moved in.

Not any longer. After casually mentioning to Sarah that it’d be nice to have a pantry on that particular wall, she enthusiastically agreed and asked if I could perform such a task. Knowing that I was absolutely not capable of such a project, I told her that I was absolutely capable of the project. Her only stipulation was that the design and color needed to match the cabinets that were already in the kitchen. I started by moving the light switches to a different wall, and adding a couple electrical outlets in their place. I didn’t take any pictures of that project, because it was fairly straightforward, and I was eager to finish it before Sarah came home that evening.

Then, it was time to take measurements. I was dismayed to find out that not only were our floors not level, but the walls were also not “level” either. The project was no longer as simple (a term I already used loosely for the work involved) as building a box with doors. Now, each piece would need to be measured and cut separately. The unit would need to be assembled directly in the space, instead of simply (again, a loose form of the term) building it in an open space and moving it into position.

The measuring and planning process looked like this:

I regretted agreeing to this…

Anyway, I forgot to take a before picture, so I’ll give you the first picture I took. Using painters tape, I taped off the area that the pantry would be installed in.

Since the house is over a hundred years old – built in 1906, I believe – the measurements between the studs was anything but consistent. The walls are plaster, so using a stud finder was a waste of time. Instead, I tied a piece of dental floss to a magnet and swung it along the wall. When the magnet stuck, I marked the newly found screw with a piece of tape. That screw would have been driven into a stud, so I also knew where the studs were, which I marked on the tape.

Sarah then painted inside the tape with white paint, and I installed some shelf tracks.

I temporarily put some shelves in, so I could measure the spacing necessary before moving on.

After that, I painted the shelves, cut and stained the pantry frame and spacers, and put the trash can in place.

That was the end of the easy part. The doors have been something that I had been thinking about for a very long time. My father-in-law was gracious enough to let me use his router on an extended loan. Using some sheet-aluminum, I made a make-shift router table and used that to cut the edges around the border of the doors. I then used my table saw to cut a groove on the inside edges of the wood. After putting the door frame together and cutting the panel board to fit, I slid it into the frame, along the grooves. All four doors had to be cut to varying widths and height, due to the non-levelness of our home, so this part was crucial to get correct the first time.

I also added crown-molding to the top, and a kick-board to the bottom.

Next came the other hard part of the project. The trash can needed to be sealed from the rest of the unit. The last thing I wanted was to smell garbage when I opened the doors. Interior panels, trim, Killz paint, and caulk did that. I cut and assembled a door, mounted it to some drawer glides and a platform. I then added hinges to the door, and a couple powerful magnets. As a result, the trash door can be opened on the hinges, or rolled out like a drawer, or both.

To think, four pages of chicken scratch turned into this:

Not bad for my first major woodworking project. Plus Sarah is very happy, and that’s really all that matters, right?

Sometimes I have an idea for a blog post that I’d like to write, but I either don’t have the time to do so, or the creative juices just aren’t flowing at the time. What I’ll do, then, is log into my site, and put in a real quick snippet of a post. When I have time, I’ll come back and finish the post.

I’ve been sitting on one particular post for three months, and I can’t write it!!!! Back in January, I logged in, titled a post, and saved it. Unfortunately, I didn’t put any notes in to know just what the hell I wanted to blog about. So what does that leave me with? It leaves me with a blog title, which I’m sure would have been a cool title once everything got tied together with the blog post.

But, I don’t have the post to accompany the title.

Damn.

Because now, I’m really wondering just what the hell I was going to write. Every time I log into my site, I see the title, begging for the body to be written, and all I can ever think to myself is, what the hell does that title mean?

The post title in question?

Aya play

What the hell does it mean?!