Cabinet Space, The Final Frontier

Some More, Before

Elyzabeth reporting.

Remember the issue I mentioned about the air conditioner/heatpump unit that was installed next to the kitchen, with the giant intake panel on the kitchen wall? We needed a new unit anyhow, so we had them move it. Part one is up in the attic now and part two outside behind the house. The empty space became our much needed pantry.

The crew needed to replace part of the under flooring in, and in front of, the new pantry space. The old unit had been leaking moisture for quite some time and the plywood underneath the old flooring was pretty spongy.

Almost There

With the AC unit and air intake panel gone, we could move the refrigerator all the way to the right. This allowed us to add a few much needed cabinets to that side of the kitchen. The upper cabinet we added had been hanging out in the master bedroom closet when we bought the house. It was just the right size to fit between the existing wall cabinet and the fridge.

On the low side next to the refrigerator, we added a three drawer unit and a skinny cabinet. These we purchased new from Home Depot. They are their in-stock bottom-of-the-line product, which fortunately has a door front style that matched our cabinets perfectly. We bought them in the natural wood, light oak finish, because we needed the wood grain to match what was already in the kitchen. If we had purchased it already in the white, it wouldn't have been wood, and wouldn't have had wood grain. These we treated like the rest of the cabinets, with a sanding, a coat of Kilz, and two coats of white semi gloss paint.

New Corner Cabinet

We also replaced the funky corner quarter-round open shelf that was in the corner by the window with a cabinet. Finally, we put together a very custom unit on that odd bit of blank wall space. We put together three wall cabinet units; the glass door unit, top, an open shelf unit, middle, and a solid door unit, bottom. When we painted these, we left the blond wood color on the inside of the glass door cabinet. The whole thing added quite a bit of new storage and we love the way it turned out.  It's become one of our favorite things about our remodel.

Custom Built Wall Cabinet

By making use of previously wasted space, we gained quite a bit of new cabinet storage with no real changes to the existing footprint of the kitchen.  

We took quite a while to decide on what to do about the counter tops. For some months, we left the old laminate tops and put a bit of board across the top of the new lower cabinets. Next time I will show you our unique and very affordable counter top solution.

Regards,
Elyzabeth