I'm no Norm Abram...

but I've been working in my own little New Yankee Workshop the past couple of weeks. Though you could probably call it the Ghetto Yankee Workshop, from the looks of what I've made!

Here's the set up: I've been irritated for probably the last 6 months with this little closet in my kitchen. It is sort of a cleaning supplies and pet food stash all, but with horrible space utilization. I think when I first bought the house, there was a shelf in the closet, but I'm sure it was off-square and disgusting (this is either where she kept her kitchen trash can, or she just would splatter dirtiness and filth around for no apparent reason), so it was cleared during the early kitchen demo. Every so often I'll go to the Container Store or Ikea and marvel at the closet organization products. I love the idea of having a totally organized pantry. Once I went so far as to gather the materials to perfectly organize the closet with those wire shelf systems. Then I realized I was quickly getting up to $200 in closet shelving, and decided it was a ridiculous idea (and probably I wanted shoes or jeans or something more than shelving parts) Nevertheless, the closet remained an irritation.

There's also a wire shelf outside of the closet - a Target purchase that worked as a microwave stand in my Jamaica Plain apartment, but doesn't really fit the space in the house. It ends up holding a bunch of stuff and looks kinda messy.

Picking up Materials: last Saturday I decided to avoid homework at all costs, and headed out to do some errands. While at Homer, I priced out 1x3's and plain shelf planks. The planks were $7 each (I picked up 2) and the 1x3's were something like $5 total. While perusing the planks, I found a little shelf that would fit inside the closet but still leave room brooms & mops, so I decided to buy that too ($12). $31 total. Not bad. Although I do recognize that my items were not top quality. But since my "ultimate kitchen" plan includes getting rid of that closet in the long run, I figure that it won't really matter... Here's a picture of my materials:

Production: The good: I was very careful to make sure that everything was level and that I screwed the 1x3's into studs. The bad: I didn't predrill the 1x3's, so I split them at every screw point. And the drywall screws are all exposed (pretty), and I just used exra drywall screws for mop & broom hooks (so very fancy). But - I have to say that I like the new setup much better than the original. Take a look:

Jim suggested that in the spring we move the wire rack into the garage and use it as a potting bench. I thought that was a good idea. (We might have to move some cars out of the way).

The other random project kitchen project I want to do is to put a radiator cover on the 2 radiators in the kitchen. All the other radiators in the house are much fancier and aesthetically pleasing. But since the kitchen is part of an addition, I think these radiators were added later when the interior design as an afterthought. Anyway, they're ugly. But the engineer in me says that covering them would almost surely take away some efficiencies, and since the kitchen is the coldest room in the house, I'll wait until the pellet stove is installed to do that. (Scheduled for March 6th, by the way)