Kitchen - Small Update; HUGE inpact!

I haven't really talked much about our home. It's a very nice home .... at first glance. It's one of those great First Impression homes. When you first see it, you think Wow! What a cool place! If you lived here, you'd have a totally different story. I showed you the Austin Powers carpet that's in my laundry room here. I'm pretty sure it's original to house from when it was built in the late 1970's, as is the beige shag carpet in the living room and dining room. That one is tolerable for now, but will also being going buh-by in the next couple of years, now that our daughter is at a more responsible age.


I showed you the little lighted display cabinet we did a year ago in the kitchen. I love it!


We've had & still have several storage dilemmas in our house. It has no secret hiding places basement or attic.  We're forced to be a little creative, and let's face it, we're not all that great at having the funds to be as creative as we want, even in our thrifty world.


However, we get lucky sometimes and things work out like that's how it was supposed to.


Let's see if I can explain this. We have a lower kitchen cabinet that is on one side of a corner, but not a lazy susan cabinet. (sorry no pics, but our cabinets are fugly and I'm not showing the world until they look better.) The inside of this cabinet goes waaaaaaaay back to the wall. It's basically dead and wasted space. You practically have to crawl in the cabinet to get anything that has been shoved too far back. I don't know about you, but I'm on the back side of 40 and this ol' gal can't crawl in a cabinet anymore. My daughter could get back there, but too many mysteries could be lurking back there in the dark. know what I mean? eewwww!

We had many discussions on how solve that problem. We came up with the idea to see if we could create 3-4 panels that would match the dark walnut finish. We could make the necessary one be an actual functioning door, while the others were just for decoration. I wish I had some Before shots of what it looked like, but I wasn't THAT into blogging so much a year ago and it was just a strip of smooth paneling.

We went to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore to see what they had there. We had just been in there a couple of days earlier and they didn't seem to have what we were looking for then. But this time we figured, what the heck?

Wouldn't you know? They had FOUR dark walnut cabinet doors with no holes drilled in them in the perfect size! Right out in front and only $4 each!! At that exact moment, the clouds parted and sun shone down from the heavens and I heard Angels sing. Well, maybe not so much all that, but it was a glorious moment!

You'll have to excuse my photo taking skills, or lack of them, but here are the panels as they look now. Not to mention that it's not a good light day here either.

This is the only functioning door and it lets us get easier access to that area and it's no longer a scary place.

My hubby even put in 2 outlets to accommodate some cheap nightlights so we can see what's in the cabinet better. One for each shelf.  Oh, and he didn't finish off the edges of the opening or anything fancy, it's purely functional here. However, someday I'd like to add something dimensional to the centers of each door panel.


So, if you have a dilemma like this and you have access to the backside of your cabinets, add some doors. It's easier and cheaper than putting in pull out shelves...which I would love those too. ;^)


God bless and have a great day!

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