The Lang Casa has a teensy kitchen, with very little storage space. From side to side, it's a hair over 9 ft. wide, and from front to back, it's 15.5 ft. long, give or take an inch or so. This roughly rectangular room has a central aisle flanked on one side by a bare minimum of cabinets and counter space, plus the stove and refrigerator. On the other side is a smidge more counter space, about the same amount of cabinetry, and the waterworks (dishwasher and sink). There is a teensy, 2.5 ft x 2.5 ft pantry tucked into one corner of the room, leaving about 7 ft by 5 ft. for an eating area, necessitating a gateleg table that folds down into nothing (modified to include additional storage by yours truly - but that's another post...). The room opens on one end to the living room, and the transition from the kitchen tile to the living room laminate draws a diagonal line that adds another few precious square feet to the kitchen.
Needless to say, over the years, I've teased out as much storage as possible, one project at a time. The one that was the most rewarding for me was transforming this weird, functionless "skeleton wall" between the kitchen and the living area into an AMAZING amount of extra pantry space. It all began with my mind obsessing over this really odd feature of the house, which had always perplexed me. There was this eyesore of a "frame-only" wall, jutting out into the room a little more than 2 feet. This thing wasn't original to the house, which was built in 1970, but it had apparently been there for quite some time because the lumber it is made of measures a true 2 inches by 4 inches, which hasn't been standard since I don't know when! I had an engineer confirm that it isn't structural, so perhaps one of the previous owners felt that the kitchen and the living area needed more of a divide. I can't figure any other reason for the darn thing. The problem was, I couldn't take it out, as both the laminate in the living area and the tile in the kitchen has been cut to fit around the structure where it sat on the floor. If I took the wall out, I would be left with this rectangle of floor-failure to deal with. So, what to do? And that thought taunted me for the first 6 years of life in this house...
Until I had my EUREKA moment! If you can't fight 'em, join 'em - isn't that the saying? If I couldn't get rid of it, I had to figure out how to use it. And since it was more in the kitchen than the living area, it was clear that it should be used for kitchen storage. So with that in mind, I began.
While it was clear that this weird little wall would become shelves, it first had to get wider. After all, the horizontal space was a mere 4 inches deep. In order to do that, I had to build an identical structure, basically a box with an extra horizontal support at top and bottom, and connect it to the original one. This was the hardest part of the project for two reasons - 1) I had to get about 25 linear feet of true 2 inch by 4 inch board milled. NOT cheap. But, surprisingly easy to source. And 2) It was a seriously unwieldy structure at first.
Before I could install the second structure, I first had to deal with the little matter of the moulding alongside the existing one and at the ceiling, and the baseboard. I could have just pried off the vertical piece, since any damage would get covered by the new structure, but the baseboard and the piece at the cieling had to be cut cleanly. To knock this out, I treated myself to a Dremmel MultiMax, and sliced cleanly and successfully right through it! Can't say why, but I really loved that part of the project. Maybe it was buying and using this specialty tool, and how great it worked... I just loved it!
Once those bits of moulding were removed, I was able to put the flimsily tacked together "mirror image" in place and begin reinforcing it. It was flimsy at first because the only way to assemble it and keep it flexible enough to maneuver into place was to put the barest minimum of screws into it. Without a long discourse in geometry, just know that tilting an item such as this, which MUST fit floor to ceiling, with no gap, is not possible if the item can't flex. My hubby and I found that out the hard way on a different project. Since I couldn't build it in place, which was the only other option, I had to make it flexible somehow. By building it with a bare minimum of fasteners, it meant that the rectangle could flex, very carefully, into a trapezoid, which made it possible to snug it up to the original structure without damaging the ceiling or walls. Just... trust me on the geometry, m'kay folks. I lived it.
Once it was in place, I set about making it structurally sound with simple "L" shaped lumber fasteners. (I had peeled the price tags off so that they wouldn't show once it was all painted.) I placed the brackets so that they were in the middle of the structure, ensuring that screws would go into both the original box and the new one, attaching them firmly together.
The next thing to do was to add the shelves. Now, I'm a little bit obsessive, so I measured and measured and measured and measured again. And then I marked and marked and marked and remarked and marked again... And even with all of this measuring and marking, etc, there are still some minor imperfections in the finished product, though I dare anyone that doesn't live in my head to find them. Seriously, do your best, and build in a little room for a buffer, and then relax.
I knew I wanted to use these clear, rounded-cube glass jars with silver screw-top lids from The Container Store for these shelves. They come in three sizes. I also wanted to use the silver mesh CD and DVD storage boxes that The Container Store sells to corral cookbooks and bottles of stuff, so I had all of those measurements and worked out my shelf measurements on graph paper until I was happy. I also had to cut my shelves to size from 10" wide lumber (since 8" lumber isn't truly 8" anymore...). Once I had cut all my shelves (length AND width), I started putting them in, using more of the "L" fasteners, centered between the old and the new boxes.
Once all of the shelves were in place, I glued in wood shims to fill any obnoxious gaps. I clipped the extra off with the Dremmel MultiMax. After sanding, I went in with wood filler until I was happy. I let all of it cure, then sanded the whole shebang and went over it with a damp tack cloth to get rid of the dust.
Once that was all done, I primed the new part, and applied 3 coats of super-high gloss paint in a dark chocolate brown to the whole thing. The picture above is of the pantry with all of the brand-spankin' new accoutrements from The Container Store placed in it! I was in LURVE!
The final touch was using eye screws and thin chain from Home Depot to create a "rail" on the living room-side of the shelves, so that as you're grabbing something from the kitchen-side, you can't accidentally push it off the back of the shelf and end up with a big mess of wasted food and broken glass. I also put thin rubber shelf liners under the glass jars to give a little "grab" for safety. Love, love, LOVE how it turned out!!
Disclaimer - Please forgive these terrible pictures. When I took them, I wasn't thinking about a blog, I was just documenting the project for my own amusement. With any luck, pictures of future projects will provide better instructional value.
