Kitchen Demo

Time to start the kitchen renovation.

First, demo. Here is the kitchen before. To the left of the stove, there is a redundant closet/pantry. To the left of that pantry, there is another pantry. There is also ANOTHER pantry to the left of the refrigerator. So basically step one was to remove two of the three pantries in favor of more cabinets and counter space.

Before:


And after:
I know it looks like we've created less counter and fewer cabinets by doing this, but don't you fret. We have plans!

We scooted the fridge over into the space where pantry #3 used to be. Since it's recessed into the wall, the fridge sits back quite a bit and is very unobtrusive now. It's a counter-depth fridge anyway, so it was already not very obtrusive.


Here is how the room looks with the new layout. Ahhh, breathing room! We purchased a few cabinets on craigslist because we found some that were a match to the existing ones--lucky! I dragged one into place to show how the layout will look down the line.


Please excuse the dust. Renovation :) I have a lot of cabinets to build.

Greenhouse Shelf

The greenhouse is all set up, but it needed a place for plants besides the floor. The greenhouse building video showed a way to install some shelves, so I pretty much followed their instructions. It was not a huge project; it took about an afternoon of work.

I used a 2x2 as the front edge support for the shelf. The center brace that is part of the greenhouse wall was be the back support. In this picture you can see the back brace (with metal L bracket) that will hold up the back of the shelf. I used a bracket that I could slide over the redwood brace because i didn't want to put holes in the pretty redwood.
To make the shelf itself, I cut poplar dimensional lumber into lengths and set them across the supports.

Some of them had to be custom cut to fit. I cut notches in the back of the slats to wrap then around the wall studs (you can see why I needed to do that in this picture). I couldn't just cut them short because they wouldn't have anything supporting them in the back.


Here is a closer picture of the slats. You can see where I cut them to fit around the wall studs. The colors in the wood I used for the slats were really beautiful. It's not as rich as the redwood of the greenhouse itself, but the colors definitely work. Wood is gorgeous.


Here is how the shelf looks from across the greenhouse. You can see my little space heater in there keeping it above freezing. The heater doesn't have to run all the time--it has an "anti-freeze" setting, which just keeps the temp above 35 in there. During the day it stays cozy warm just from the sun, but it needs a little help from the heater at night. You can also see the 2x2 legs that i put on the shelf for support. Don't want my little plantalonas to come tumbling down!


I nailed the slats it just along the front edge (for now) to hold them in place. I didn't want to put a million holes in the redwood, which is why i didn't nail the back edge down, but I may change that later if the slats are not secure enough.

Look how happy the little plants look basking in the winter sun! All warm and cozy in the greenhouse :)