I am moving to a new place and unfortunately the kitchen has little storage space, no kitchen cabinets and little counter space. Does anyone have solutions or ideas for what to do in place of cabinets or how to go about putting in some?
Thanks so much.
By Laurie C.
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Make a pot hanger: you need two heavy-duty screw eyes, one piece of rebar, and some large S-hooks. Choose a location for pot rack so dangling pots will not get in your way. Screw the eyes into your ceiling, about one yard apart. Thread the rebar through, crimp on the S-hooks (or purchase potrack hooks, pricey), and hang up your pots. For kitchen utensils, get a strip of wood about 5" across and 2' long; screw it to the wall at a good height. Hammer in some finishing nails (you can do this beforehand), staggering them in three rows, not too close together. If you have floor space, get some benches or bricks and plywood as a base, and put some cabinets on them; the surface top of these cabinets will be your new counter space.
If you want wall cabinets, check with a construction salvage place, your County dump recycling department, and check with a cabinet shop to see if they have discarded cabinets. If you buy at Home Depot, there are a million tiny screws, it's a huge pain in the somewhere to assemble cabinets, so get someone to help you.
One place, long ago that I moved into, had a stove, refrigerator, tiny table and no cabinets. I paid 2.00 for an open bookcase and hung it on the wall closest to the table. For the pans I had one of those cheap metal filing cabinets and all my pots in one and pans in the other. If you have wall space take a board and put it across a blank part of the wall. It has to be long enough to reach from stud to stud (what the sheet rock is nailed to) and in your case I suspect they are 18 inches on center.
I've had a wall mount plate rack for years and would never give it up! It stores all my plates, some mugs and some bowls. They can be a few hundred dollars but if you shop around and get one used you could get lucky, try ebay or craiglist.org.
I found a used buffet (sometimes called a sideboard). It has larger openings at either end with doors on them and a shelf inside. Down the center are drawers. I had a piece of glass cut to fit the top (cost maybe $25) and placed a pretty pice of fabric between the glass and wood. You woundn't have to have the glass, but this is a really pretty piece of furniture and I don't want to scratch the top since I use it like a counter top.
Just due to my 87 year old mother being bent over and short I put up wire shelves you can buy in many places. One hangs over the cellar door, one is mounted on the wall perpendicular to the back door (it's a small kitchen) and one (6 feet tall) I had to mount in the dinette.
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