No Longer a Computer Desk

When we decided to "Sayonara" our gorgeous hutch from the kitchen (and from our lives) in order to create the space for a more practical kitchen layout, we didn't waste much time getting that layout organised.

The dishwasher (which is still not plugged in) moved from this little spot to the right of the fridge, across to its new home to be next to the sink (so much better than being a couple of metres away from the sink AND blocking the only entry to the kitchen when open).

So that left that space next to the fridge wide open for me to start dreaming of a proper pantry. Nothing quite like our dream-of-a-pantry at our last house, but I'll accept a cabinet that doesn't require me to crawl on my hands and knees in order to get my cereal in the morning, which is what we've been putting up with since banishing the hutch.

I trawled my favourite secondhand furniture websites for weeks. I considered TV cabinets and bookshelves and who knows what else, but they all required way too much work (i.e. carpentry work) to not only get them to fit into that space, but to get them functioning ok as a pantry.

And then I spotted this guy.

For $15!!!!!

Sure, he's a computer cabinet, so he's not exactly designed to be a pantry, but his size was P.E.R.F.E.C.T. This guy was meant to be ours.

And at a price of $15? I HAD to have him! I think I left an sms, a voicemail and an email for the seller within the space of an hour, and as fate would have it, I was the first person to pester him about it! Plenty of interest followed behind me, but my eagerness won out. Woohoo!

We took the ute off to collect him last Saturday morning, and then had to assess how we were going to slot him into position.

The biggest problem? That vertical timber post you can see on the right there (that incidentally is holding up the ceiling between the kitchen and dining room now). You can see it best in the above photo if you look at the very dirty floor on the front right of the opening. It juts out about 5 centimetres or so from the wall, and our cabinet needed to wedge in behind it.

Not going to happen. We tried.

So the only possible way that our new pantry cabinet was going to slot in was if the vertical guy came out.

To get the cabinet at the right height, we chopped up a few chunks of wood in order to chock it up.

And then after a bit of this...

And a bit more of this...

And a touch of this...

He was in!

And my oh my was he perfect!

He even matches the colour of the rest of the kitchen cabinets, although that doesn't really help us much since we're planning on painting them all once we eventually make a paint colour choice.

Tom reinstalled the timber post, which only limits the door opening a little bit.

 He's not totally flawless (the cabinet, not Tom, of course)...

But we figure that when we paint him we'll be able to patch that little blemish up, and no-one will be the wiser.

I'm even imagining blackboard paint on those four flat panels, for a bit of fun.

And then came the best part, in my view. Filling him up!!!

I  stole a little timber stool from somewhere else in the house to add extra storage on the biggest shelf...

And since I can't find my beloved 'cansolidator' (he's probably still packed away in a box somewhere),the cans are stacked in rows the old fashioned way. Not in love with it, but it's better than storing them all at the back of a deep cabinet, so I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

There's plenty of room for the copious amounts of stock I seem to have accumulated...

And the area designed for the computer tower is actually pretty perfect for big soft drink bottles and olive oil tins.

And our various pasta-ish products (plus a random soy sauce bottle) are living on the bottom shelf.

I had thought that the pull-out shelves that come with computer desks (i.e. the keyboard tray) would be fantastic for storing things so that they can be pulled out for easy viewing, but the doors don't quite open enough to allow those shelves to roll out. Might need a bit of modification to make that work.

We're all about improvements here though, so this solid little guy is definitely improvement enough to make us extremely happy!

There's even the potential for some excellent storage underneath if I can figure out a way to install a drawer into a future baseboard.

I'm dreaming of something like this (sourced here).

So there you have it! One more step along the way to having a proper grown-up kitchen. Only a connected stove-top, real kitchen sink, hooked-up dishwasher and proper full benchtops to go! And that's just the beginning.