Between Eating Bon Bons

When my husband comes home after work I like to tell him I sat around all day eating bon bons and some days I probably do sit around more than I should, but usually my days are quite full.  One thing I love to do is decorating our old home, but throughout the school year I can barely keep the house neat and the family fed and, consequently major projects sit waiting for summer when we close down school for a well deserved break.  I love our home with its beautiful woodwork, hardwood floors, the quaint nooks and crannies, but it has one major defect: our house lacks storage space.

And so began a quest this year to add storage to the kitchen. One thing I also wanted to do was include a bit of charm along with it.  And the little cogs in my brain began to whir and spin and I headed for the garage to see what I could scrounged up. I came upon an old wooden door and took it to my neighbor to have him cut it in half.  After bit of elbow grease I had the paint removed and then I screwed the two halves together.  Due to my cheapness this sat in my kitchen all through the fall, winter and spring until this summer as I needed to find rounded shelves without having to purchase them.

To create the shelves I notified everyone I knew that I wanted a round table top.  We have a wonderful week in early spring here in Fargo, ND called clean-up week and one day there on the side of the road my sister found a table minus the legs.  This time I called upon my father's expertise and he cut the top into quarters and I then attached the 4 shelves to my door.  I reattached the door knob and the hinges, a bit of free paint from the local hazardous waste facility, and voila my corner shelf!

Now, my flour mill has a home on the bottom shelf and this has the added benefit of freeing up some precious counter space.  The rest of the shelves I am using to store last year's canned goods - this way I will use them up before they get too old.

For my next storage piece I wanted something to keep out the dust, but more importantly the dog hair which floats around our home in vast quantities.  Many years ago I was given two glass doors from an old farm house that was being demolished.  I also had an upper cabinet sitting in our garage and miraculously the doors fit the upper cabinet perfectly.  After thinking about what I could use for legs I went to the local hardware store and purchased newel posts used for decks and just flipped them upside down and screwed them into the bottom.  Some more paint from the hazardous waste and a couple of hinges and the cabinet is almost complete.  I still need something for the top and I am thinking of heading over to the local granite store to see if they have a small piece for a reasonable price, but even without a nice top I am quite pleased with the result.

No longer do I need to literally squat down to a height of 4 feet to squeeze under the stair landing in the basement to grab a jar of tomatoes for our spaghetti or a jar of jelly for breakfast. Another plus is I don't lose a jar of apple butter and find it three years later behind the salsa. Now all my canned goods are accessible to me and I hope by the end of summer I will have my glass cabinet almost full of tomatoes, crab apple jelly, stewed tomatoes, apple pie in a jar and jalapeno jelly just to name a few.

You may wonder what is now under the stair landing in the basement?  I now keep all our leftover paint in that teeny, tiny space.  Still irritatingly inaccessible, but at least I don't need a can of paint as often as a jar of tomatoes!

One more thing, please excuse my bad pictures.  I am not a photographer in any sense as you can tell, but I wanted you to see the finished projects.