A Bit of Elbow Room

After the excitement of our 'Trash the Dress' photoshoot (for which I should hopefully have the rest of the photos soon), we're back to house jobs again!

This time, we're back to the house that we built for our fridge.

The poor fridge has never been able to slot all the way back into its house, because of these brackets that we put in to support the shelf above it. The one that currently holds all of my recipe books. And we couldn't just relocate that shelf upwards, because we wanted the shelf to line up with the bottom of the wall cabinets on either side of the fridge house.

The source of the problem was these elbows sitting on top, connecting the doors to the fridge itself. Because they sit just a little bit higher than the top of the fridge, they were colliding with our shelf brackets, meaning we could only push the fridge in as far as the back of the elbow.

So we pulled the fridge out. On a mat, of course. We didn't want to scratch our floor.

And we marked the size of the elbows on each of the shelf brackets.

And brought out the reticulating saw to chop out the corner that we'd marked.

Finishing it off with some chiseling.

The little piece that we chopped out looked pretty sad and sorry by the end. The reticulating saw burned its way through, leaving it a bit charred.

So about 20 minutes after we first started, we were finished (except that I still have to paint the bits we've exposed now)! We slid the fridge back into place, and it finally sits where it's supposed to, sitting out from the walls of its house only just enough for the doors to open freely.

It's definitely a snug fit! Hopefully future owners of this house have a smaller fridge!

It's not much of a before and after, but it has actually made quite a dramatic difference to how that side of the kitchen feels. That extra 10cm of space created by pushing the fridge all the way back has made the path into the kitchen just a bit roomier, which is great.