ArchitectBlog.org

For those of you who have been to my home, you know the kitchen was remodeled prior to us moving in and that all I’ve had to do so far was add accessories (ice maker, garbage disposal, handles on the cabinets). Oh, and paint over the old ugly green walls. And replace two windows over the sink. And put in new blinds. That’s it, really. Even with all this work, it was nice, but I wasn’t really enthralled with it. The granite counters and slate floor are nice, but it didn’t function the way I needed it to and I never had enough storage. So I decided I needed a floor to ceiling pantry along the back wall!

Now kitchen cabinets are not cheap – in fact, this project scared me a little with a baby on the way, but I was determined to find a way to do it. In steps the Swedish wonder IKEA…. They make inexpensive cabinets and all sorts of kitchen stuff, maybe they would have a pantry cabinet that would fit.

Here’s where the low ceilings of my house come in handy instead of a detriment. Ikea’s Billy line of bookcases (with the extension top) are just about the same height as my kitchen ceiling. So close in fact, that I had to trim 1/2″ off the bottom of the cabinets to get them in, and still had to build them upright because of the tight fit. Bookcases are just as good for food storage as any other cabinet, right?

Once assembled, to help with the built-in look, I removed the baseboards, added a filler piece along the right side against the wall painted to match the wall color, and cut the door trim on the left side by about 3/4″ for a really tight fit. Once assembled, and secured to each other and to the walls and ceiling, it had a full, built-in professional look. A stack of glass doors keeps the kid out of the food while also preserving the visual space of the kitchen.

I gave up 7 square feet of relatively unused floor space and gained 50 cubic feet of storage space – all for under $700 and 6 hours of work. With all this new storage, it was time to reorganize the whole kitchen, which of course led me to yet another project, which I will post later.

Tags: decor, ikea, kitchen, storage

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 11:00 AM and is filed under architecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.