It's a wonderful shelf life

What goes around, comes around, when it comes to shelving material in my house.   One of my favorite sets of shelves that I made out of  rescued-from-other-discarded-shelves boards is this crazy CD case on the left.  (Remember CD's?)  Over the years, this set of shelves holds fewer and fewer CDs and more and more knick-knacks.  The different heights and eclectic spacing goes a long way toward hiding the fact that I am not particularly good at enforcing right angles in my projects.

Sketching out designs for this baby and turning it into a reality was such a lovely challenge.  (Wow, I still look back on this fondly.)

Another of my favorite set of shelves isn't quite as picturesque, but continues to come in super handy:  the canning-jar storage I made out of old fence board a few years back.    Yeah, those.

But I'm not exactly elegant when it comes to woodworking.  I'm in awe of the amazing kitchen renovation that Mrs. Planting Our Pennies undertook a few years back  . . . wowzers!

Given my propensity for slapping things together rather than undertaking fine carpentry, I'll admit that making my own shelves, fun though it may be, pales in utility compared to adding shelves to existing cabinetry.  I've added shelves to my kitchen cabinets (measure, saw a board to the correct size, add a few of those funky shelving brackets that let you adjust the height of existing shelves, and voila).  I've added shelves to clothing closets in my sewing room to make space for storing paperwork and family tree stuff (measure, saw a board, add shelf supports, and voila).  I've added shelves to the funky-shaped, built-in corner cabinets in our dining room (same as above, but add in a painting step).

And not because it's any trickier than any of the others, here's a before-and-after of my latest add-shelves-to-exisiting-cabinets project.  These are cabinets I bought unfinished and then stained and varnished myself about, oh, three decades ago.  They came with a closed cabinet on the bottom, an open almost-square space in the middle, three drawers that you can pull out all the way, and an open shelf on top.

The cabinets, with a wine-rack added on the left and
and extra shelf added toward the bottom on the right.

A new shelf on top holds hot mats,
the second shelve holds plates, and below that
we have space for bowls.  

I've discovered through experimentation I love keeping dishes in the dining room instead of the kitchen.  Since we're moving to a home with much less shelf space (yay!), and in particular the new dining room has no built-in cabinets, I'm getting ready in advance by adding a few extra shelves to these destined-for-the-dining-room cabinets.   I built these 'new' shelves by sawing apart some boards from old, disassembled bookshelves that used to be in our bedroom.  They color doesn't exactly match, but I figure it's close enough.

Underneath, the shelf makes space for
 serving bowls, extra flatware, and napkins.

In this cabinet, we've added a wine rack
and two shelves, so now we have space
for cups, serving bowls, and candles.

Why do I love this latest project?  Well, first, it's just fun to make things and rearrange them.  I grew up playing with dollhouses, spending hours with them.  I almost never touched the dolls.  Instead, I rearranged furniture, added new items, moved walls around . . . I was a little architect.  This shelf project is partly like getting to play dollhouse again.

But I also love it because this arrangement lets family and guests help themselves and help me.  Here, for example, is my four-year-old granddaughter.  If I pull out the flatware drawers so she can reach them, she can (and does) set the entire table by herself.

A-child has already put plates and napkins on the table;
now she's getting forks and knives.

She knows forks go on the left and knives on the right.
She also knows who's napkin is whose.  

Having my dishes and such gathered together and easily visible makes it much easier for me to take guests up on their offer when they ask, "Is there anything I can do to help?", and it makes hosting dinners for many people run all-the-more smoothly.  (In this sense, shelf-engineering projects spill over into social engineering).  I think this rearrangement is going to work great, . . . if I do say so my shelf.

(har).