Pimp my Kitchen

[snowangel]

We moved just under a year ago, to a house with a much smaller kitchen. We have done many things, including replacing all of the kitchen appliances (all of which worked, but barely) and the countertops (a formica-type leatherette which required a toothbrush for cleaning). We still need to replace the harvest gold vinyl sheet good flooring, which has numerous dings, dents and cigarette burns. But, none of these are minor replacements. Following is about the little stuff one can do to make a kitchen more efficient, make it more one's own, make it "hold more stuff." Tweaking a kitchen.

As I mentioned in my Music in the Kitchen thread, my kitchen was sorely lacking in music.

So, pursuant to what I reported on earlier, today was spent installing the equipment. Above the vent hood over the stove, which is on an island. Pretty neat solution for a kitchen with no counter space:

On the left of the vent hood, you will barely see a bit of a speaker wire, which we ran through the cupboard on the left of the vent hood, and fished through the soffit. There is one speaker mounted on the soffit. To the right, you will see the car antenna and speaker wire, fed through the right cupboard. If you read the thread linked above, you will note that we have tied the power for the converter (12 amp to 120 volts) into the power for the hood with a plug thing. The antenna resides at the top of this cupboard, and the speaker wire was run all of the way through this cupboard, down into the basement (laundry room underneath), through the floor joists, attached to an existing speaker wire (there are speaker wires everywhere in this house) and that speaker is mounted in the dining room. Please don't quibble with my choice of equipment; it was an inexpensive solution to a great need, I had the speakers, and I love these speakers. Not only is there an emotional attachment, but they provide a nice warm sound. Now that I am Old, I don't want to crank the tunes to the level I did a number of years ago. Outside of the car stereo and power converter, we had everything we needed. Even black spray paint for for the mounting brackets (which we also had) for mounting the speakers on the wall/soffit (speakers are black). There is nice room on the other side of the vent for the hood to store some CD's. The radio stations have been programmed.

Since I had to empty the cupboards adjacent to the vent hood, we took this opportunity to rip some plywood and replace the crappy shelves that were sagging. I managed to remember where I had placed that unused roll of shelf paper almost a year ago, so I have nice new shelves. Well, not all of the ones that need to be replaced have been replaced, but we had enough extra 3/4" birch plywood do do the ones that had been emptied. This one was almost no cost -- the plywood was spare scraps, and I already had the contact paper. Another improvement.

Next on the docket is the pantry:

This is on the wall opposite the end of the island (the little door is the laundry shoot). This pantry is about 30" deep and about 24" side. The "shelves" (2 x 2's, "glued" together with contact paper) are stationary. As you can imagine, with a pantry this deep and narrow, you can't access what's at the back without emptying the front of the shelf. Paul and Diana have been spending Sunday's in the garage watching Nascar and perfecting joinery, so we will soon have shallow drawers with runners in this space, so we can better use it.

There are a few other things on the docket. We put a microwave above the sink. Next weekend, we will bury that power cord into the wall (there is an extra circuit!) so we can eliminate that cord across the wall. I have already replaced the ornate, crap collecting knobs on the cupboards (I found something I really liked at Ikea for $4.99 for 6 or 8 -- I forget which -- of them). The new ones are nice and sleek and have a good look. Someone at freemarket.org had the right colored hinges to go with the new knobs, so I will spend some time in the coming weeks replacing the hinges on the kitchen cupboards/cabinets.

This is all small stuff -- monitarily, at least. But, it is about tweaking the space. The kitchen, like I said, is small, but the workspace is efficient. In an ideal world, I would have been able to tear the soffits out, replace all of the cabinets and cupboards (they are wonderful quality except the quality of the shelves and color -- darker than I would like), but reality is that we have had a ton of yard work to do, we need a new furnace, need to finish an unfinished room...the list goes on, so we are doing what we can do, and doing it ourselves.

What have you tweaked in your kitchen. No major reno tales here, just the little stuff. How do you make your space work for you?

Edited February 27, 2005 by snowangel (log)

[tamiam]

I like your music idea--big improvement for little cash too. Little stuff I really like in a kitchen:

1. A sink that is deep enough not to splash, and big enough to wash a good sized pot or roaster.

2. Good lighting. If the light isn't good enough, you can install something on the underside of those cabinets that sit above the counters.

3. A block of wood or something to elevate the stuff in the back of those deep pantry shelves so it isn't lost back there for the next hundred years.

4. A knife block that sits flat inside of a drawer cuz there is no room on the counter and I don't care to have them hanging on a magnetic strip getting all dirty and posing a risk to the kids' cute little limbs.

and lots of daydreaming about the big re-do that isn't likely to happen any too soon.

[rooftop1000]

I am currently living in a real "live" log cabin circa 1950 the cabinets are built in ...really built in, on one wall they actually came all the way to the counter top leaving you an 8 inch deep counter the other wall had a funiture piece for the lower and home depot uppers ...now these uppers arent very high because of the beams in the ceiling...just 12 inches off the counter top....well we ripped out the main counter...had to cut off the bottom of the built ins to get it out and replaced the furniture piece with more home depot crap and ......a dish washer, new offset drain sink and some trim to cover what we hacked off. Oh yes we of course mismeasured the space for the new countertop.....didnt leave an extra inch in the corner for the dishwasher door to open so the custom counter is almost an inch short at the end of the run... i figure if it ever bothers me we can add some quarter round moulding. In another corner is an 18 inch deep home depot pantry which someday I will double by adding another to the front since it is next to the 36 inch deep fridge....someday I will also figure out how to get an exhaust fan in there....right now the stove is in front of a window I am thinking maybe a down draft stove vented into the crawlspace maybe but I really want a dualfuel stove next so who knows....just open the window when the smoke threatens the alarms

tracey

Edited February 27, 2005 by rooftop1000 (log)

[snowangel]

Tamiam, in reply to a couple of your thoughts:

I had to replace the sink. It was a hacked up stainless (with dents!) and only 6" deep. So, I went with the above. Above the sink, you will see my knives. My kids are a bit older (9, almost 11 and 14), but the sink and counter are deep enough that little kids can't get into them. I think that magnetic strips in the right space are pretty great. I only have 4 small drawers in my kitchen, so giving one of them up to a knife thing wasn't in the picture. And, I remember well the gunk I found underneat the knife block on the counter in our former house, as well as the gunk in the drawer mounted knife block in my folks kitchen when I cleaned for them. Somewhere there is a thread on EG about knife blocks and gunk. Above the sink, you can see the microwave, which is strapped in with that metal stuff with holes in it. We did make sure to purchase a microwave that didn't need venting on the back side. You can also see the cord that needs to be buried in the wall.

Fortunately, behind that wall is the bathroom, with a medicine cabinet which has electricity. So, we will take out the medicine cabinet and tie into that space (like I said, we have an empty circuit) and my husband is very electrically handy.

(I should add that we buy each other tools (power or not) for anniversary and birthday and holidays gifts ).

This photo shows the nifty keen faucet I have:

In the preceeding photo, you saw the faucet as it usually is. It's a Moen Legend High Rise. It is neat because the neck of the faucet rises to the occasion. That white thing at the end of the faucet, if you pull it out, does the spray thing. It's a wonderful thing, and unlike those pull-out things, does not wear out (the pull-out spray thing and a little overactive child with a fascination with all things mechanical mean frequent replacements). I had this same faucet in my former house, and in over 10 years of constant use, never had a problem, nor needed a replacement part.

[fifi]

In my previous house, my sink was a double sink but it was a really big bowl and a smaller bowl for the disposer. That was the one thoughtful thing I did when I bought that house. I didn't realize how much I valued that big sink until I moved to the apartment with a typical useless double sink. My sister's house has one of those. We measured my sink and found that it fits in exactly the same dimensions as the useless double. Also, mine was a builder's grade stainless and worked just fine thank you. For not many bucks, you can replace the useless thing, not having to mess with counters or anything.

Another thing my sister has done is the sliding baskets from Elfa in the bottom cabinets and shallow ones in a deep pantry like snowangel's.

In another apartment gallery kitchen, I used a wire grid on the end wall to hang stuff on. This saved a ton of drawer space for large utensils and such and I didn't have counter space for my usual crock approach.

Another neat trick I saw was in Dave the Cook's kitchen where he used a wire shelving unit to hang pots and put the lids in baskets. Inspired. If I can find that post, I will add a link.

Cup hooks on the underside of a shelf in a dish cabinet is sometimes useful for hanging cups and mugs depending on how high the space is.

[Mayhaw Man]

How about a lazy susan or two in that pantry? Or a swing our door on it that has shelving (my mom has an awesome one, I will take a picture of it next weekend when I am up there-not much to it really, but it sure is a handy place for spices and small jars of stuff).

[patti]

Since joining eGullet, I've made several tweaks that have really made a difference to me. First, I needed to utilize my space more efficiently because I bought many new spices and herbs and other ingredients that take up lots of space. I got rid of a few unecessary items and made a new spice cabinet. Inside the cabinet, I put an expandable step shelf, which is hidden under all the spices:

I also put in a small turntable:

The pantry door was being underused, so we put in two on-the-door units (um, ignore the laundry on the floor of the laundry room behind the open pantry door, please):

There was some dead space on the wall of the pantry, so a unit similar to the two on the door was put in place:

And on two of the big shelves inside the pantry, we added small chrome shelf expanders (you can't see the one on the top shelf as it's full of stuff):

Inspired by the talk of metro shelving in DavetheCook's kitchen remodel thread, I added similar type shelving in the laundry room for some of my pots. This unit is fairly new and not as well organized as it could be. Looking at this picture allowed me to see that this needs more tweaking:

EDIT: Ack! I should've hidden all the things on the shelves I don't want eGulleters to see!

Edited February 27, 2005 by patti (log)

[chromedome]

My kitchen is small enough and old enough that I have no room for shelving or pantries or almost anything else. I did find a couple of small towel rods, however, that fit into odd spots on the sides of cupboards and between walls and cupboards. These have been handy for hanging utensils on; especially given that my drawers are too shallow for any but the flattest of items.

In spaces too small for even the towel bars, I've used cup hooks to hang a miscellany of small gizmos.

[Chris Amirault]

Man oh man, Patti! You can pimp my kitchen any time!!

Where'd you get those spice shelves? I have a gazillion Penzeys' jars taking up two full drawers in our dining room side board. And I'm definitely going to buy some pantry door stuff holder thingies!!

Snowangel, another addictive thread!

[andiesenji]

Man oh man, Patti! You can pimp my kitchen any time!!

Where'd you get those spice shelves? I have a gazillion Penzeys' jars taking up two full drawers in our dining room side board. And I'm definitely going to buy some pantry door stuff holder thingies!!

Snowangel, another addictive thread!

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Check at Wal-Mart, they have both wire and solid expandable 3-step spice shelves.

Or you can see a bunch at this site!

You can also get one that swings down to eye level if you have a upper level cabinet shelf on which it will fit. That one is fantastic, especially for the vertically-challenged.

Pull down spice rack.

There is also one made of stainless steel wire that is a bit more expensive but this one works just fine.

[bilrus]

My favorite little space-saving, convenience adding thing I did was to purchase one of those 3M adhesive plastic hooks and affix it to the front of the cabinet door that I do most of my prep work under. I bought a pants hanger that I can use to hang my recipes in front of me, at eye level, saving valuable counter space. All for a cost of about 5 bucks.

Edited February 27, 2005 by bilrus (log)

[patti]

Man oh man, Patti! You can pimp my kitchen any time!!

Where'd you get those spice shelves? I have a gazillion Penzeys' jars taking up two full drawers in our dining room side board. And I'm definitely going to buy some pantry door stuff holder thingies!!

Snowangel, another addictive thread!

←

Thanks, Chris. I bought everything at Lowe's. I linked to a picture of an expandable step shelf in my post (couldn't find one at Lowe's online site), but maybe you didn't notice it: expandable wooden step shelf

BTW, there are more shelves in my pantry, but I didn't want y'all to see ALL of the clutter.

My favorite little space-saving, convenience adding thing I did was to purchase one of those 3M adhesive plastic hooks and affix it to the front of the cabinet door that I do most of my prep work under. I bought a pants hanger that I can use to hang my recipes in front of me, at eye level, saving valuable counter space. All for a cost of about 5 bucks.

Wow, great idea, Bill!

[Jaymes]

I have moved over 37 times in my life, and many of the kitchens were small and awkward.

My favorite 'pimp out' trick was to buy fake beams at the hardware store. Stain them or paint them whatever color seems to best match your kitchen. Install them in your ceiling. And hang stuff from them.

I don't currently live in a house where I've done that so can't take photos. And it may be sort of hard to understand. But it looks great and adds a lot of storage space.

You just want the beams running one way. Often I had a long, narrow kitchen. What looked best was short beams going across....kind of like a ladder. Depending on the length of the room, of course, you'd want two to five. I hung herbs and baskets and pots and utensils and all sorts of things from them. VERY handy, and it looked spectacular.

Wish I had a photo.

[Jaymes]

Cup hooks on the underside of a shelf in a dish cabinet is sometimes useful for hanging cups and mugs depending on how high the space is.

Actually, in small kitchens, I do cup hooks on the underside of the cabinet, dangling over the counter. And I do big cup hooks. I put my bulky soup cups or mugs on them. That way, the cups are out of the cabinets, which are always jammed.

Edited February 27, 2005 by Jaymes (log)

[bilrus]

I also ususally put hooks on my wall over my prep area and hang my measuring cups and spoons on the wall under my cabinets.

[andiesenji]

I have lots of hooks, I like everything within easy reach and I absolutely detest having to dig through a bunch of stuff in a drawer to find something when I need it RIGHT NOW!

I don't care how fitted a drawer organizer is, if you have more than 5 items in the drawer, something will be on the bottom.

I also have a lot of tool holders that can stand on a counter, set in a roll-out drawer or hang on a wall or on the end of a Metro-type shelf system.

[patti]

Andie, I bet you've got the best outfitted kitchen ever, bar none. I love reading about what you have and how and where you store things and how you use your kitchen tools. You rock!

Edited February 27, 2005 by patti (log)

[fifi]

I need to add another vote for Patti's wire shelves on the doors. A few months ago, this came up somewhere here on one of the remodel topics. I actually went to my plans and figured out that I could put double doors on my walk in pantry so I could have more of those things. They are a fabulous solution for someone like me that collects vinegars and other condiments like an idiot.

Spices are always a problem. I am on the hunt for some of those plastic bread "basket" things that stack and are shallow. They use them to deliver bread and rolls and such. I don't have a picture of what I have seen since I haven't found them yet. Anyway, you could lay down the spice jars and bottles and be able to see what you have but stack them on a pantry shelf.

[Jaymes]

I am on the hunt for some of those plastic bread "basket" things that stack and are shallow. They use them to deliver bread and rolls and such.

Don't know if you have a "Rudy's BBQ" in Houston, but they use them to load up your 'Q and fixin's. If you have one there, you could undoubtedly ask them where they get them.

Or try a restaurant supply house. I'm sure Houston has several large ones. I find restaurant supply stores to be absolutely invaluable for everything from cheap plates and glasses to snazzy chile pepper chef's pants.

[andiesenji]

I need to add another vote for Patti's wire shelves on the doors. A few months ago, this came up somewhere here on one of the remodel topics. I actually went to my plans and figured out that I could put double doors on my walk in pantry so I could have more of those things. They are a fabulous solution for someone like me that collects vinegars and other condiments like an idiot.

Spices are always a problem. I am on the hunt for some of those plastic bread "basket" things that stack and are shallow. They use them to deliver bread and rolls and such. I don't have a picture of what I have seen since I haven't found them yet. Anyway, you could lay down the spice jars and bottles and be able to see what you have but stack them on a pantry shelf.

←

Check at Wal-Mart. They have some plastic ones but they are not as good as the wire baskets.

However they are not always in the "kitchen" section but for some reason are stuck in the section that has laundry and closet stuff.

I have a bunch of them and keep all kinds of stuff like small jars and cans.

I also use them in the fridge to keep all the little jars of condiments and jams, etc., in order, stored upside-down, as I have mentioned in other posts, to keep the contents away from the air, they last much longer that way.

They have plain stainless wire or white coated wire in my local stores.

They come either 6 in x 15 in. (the size I use most) or the half length ones that are 6 x 8.

They also have narrow ones but they tip over easy.

I have some of the oval "bread" baskets made of plastic, some bought at Smart & Final and some bought at Sam's Club, (sold by the dozen). We use them outside for napkins, etc., however they get sort of gummy after a while just from being stored on a shelf (inside a bag) and are impossible to clean well (melt in the dishwasher) so I just toss them as they are pretty cheap.

I have tried just about everything and find that these wire baskets are the easiest to maintain.

[ludja]

I also ususally put hooks on my wall over my prep area and hang my measuring cups and spoons on the wall under my cabinets.

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In a somewhat similar vein, I have a wall of cabinets that extends on each side and above my sink. Above the sink the cabinets are shorter (and higher up) so I have two little cabinet "walls" available on each side of the sink.

I have a hook on each side, one for a large stainless steel bowl and one for a stainless steel collander. I have found this very helpful--being able to quickly grab for either in the midst of cooking/washing vegetables or fruit/making salads, etc. After washing/rinsing them, I can hang them up a little wet b/c they are over the sink. It's great to not have to dig around for these when I need them.

[Jaymes]

I'll tell you what's just as interesting as seeing everyone's storage ideas....

And that's seeing what everybody's got stored!

Such an eclectic collection. Some jars I recognize immediately as being old friends, but some I don't. What's that they say....make new friends, but keep the old?

Fascinating thread all the way around.

Plus, Snowangel, great title!

[tamiam]

This photo shows the nifty keen faucet I have:

In the preceeding photo, you saw the faucet as it  usually is.  It's a Moen Legend High Rise.  It is neat because the neck of the faucet rises to the occasion.  That white thing at the end of the faucet, if you pull it out, does the spray thing.  It's a wonderful thing, and unlike those pull-out things, does not wear out (the pull-out spray thing and a little overactive child with a fascination with all things mechanical mean frequent replacements).  I had this same faucet in my former house, and in over 10 years of constant use, never had a problem, nor needed a replacement part.

←

That is like the funkiest coolest faucet ever!!

And, why did anyone bother even inventing 6" deep sinks? Is it an Sado-maso thing or what?

[sparrowgrass]

I bought some plastic containers at Walmart that are supposed to be used for storing wrapping paper--they look kinda like big tote bags. They fit between the fridge and the wall, and they hold all my trays and cookie sheets.

Pot holders hang on magnetic hooks on the inside of the range hood.

[rooftop1000]

We created a 6 inch gap between teh cabinets and range by extending the new coutertop to the limit....but what to stuff in there.....heavy wire baskets that hang by a verticle strip.... all the cooking utensiles go in there not the cleanest of options but we have only 1 drawer

from the Containerstore.com

now dont complain if ya spend all your money in there