Rocket City Digs » Furniture

Drastic times, drastic measures: Converting a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom

RocketGirl75 — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:38:44 +0000

It started with the chairs.

In early July, the AIDSWalk committee convinced a few furniture dealers to donate four chairs for a fundraising raffle. Mind you, I work at a major international interiors and architecture firm, so we’re not talking a nice armchair for the den–we’re talking two tricked-out office chairs and a set of supercool lounge chairs. I bought six tickets and dropped them all in the lounge chair raffle; RocketMan instantly asked what we’d do with them if we won, but, really what were the chances?

A week later, our sun room looked like this:

Set phasers to stun.

Within an instant, we became the incredibly geeked owners of two Phillipe Starck-designed Kartell Eros chairs, retail between $400-$600 each, depending on which website you visit. They’re the coolest chairs I’ve ever owned, and I love me some chairs (this is one of my favorite coffee-table books: 1000 Chairs).

Before you keep reading, mind: I am NOT ungrateful. When my name was picked from the hat, they probably heard the squealing in Sacramento. The chairs are all shiny and sci-fi, and the swivel is as smooth as the molded plastic of the seat. RocketBaby spent several evenings being spun into delirium. On the downside, though–they take up about 16 square feet of floor space. We don’t really have an appropriate place for more sitting chairs. And, as RocketMan pointed out, they don’t exactly fit in our honey-wood cottage aesthetic, such as it is.

But Kartell Eros! I feel like they’re HEIRLOOM chairs, that forty years from now RocketBaby will be begging me to have just one for her new lunar module. I’m loathe to let them go, especially since, for all intents and purposes, they cost $25 each, and that means the universe personally gifted us with them. So we started looking at maybe getting a bigger storage space: one that could ostensibly serve as the fifth room of our apartment, as opposed to just an extra closet.

Then there was the vacation. Visiting actual houses with actual backyards and real-and-true laundry machines, and doors that close, and playing loud music without disturbing the baby–all of these things spoiled us for our return to San Francisco. I love our apartment, but suddenly the curtain in the hallway nursery seems like an awful inconvenience. I started poking around online for two-bedroom apartments. RocketMan began fantasizing about doing laundry three times a week. And a few nights ago, we had a serious discussion about whether more space would make us happier.

By the end of the conversation–which crossed the line into argument once or twice–I came to three conclusions: 1) having a door on the baby’s bedroom (one that is not made of plywood) would definitely make our lives easier, if not happier; 2) I really, really don’t want to spend half again as much money on a bigger place right now, especially when our current rent-controlled place meets most of our needs adequately; and 3) even if we find a two-bedroom, it could still be the same size as our current place, so why move at all?

So our solution (temporary though it might be): Push this apartment as far as it’ll go. We’ve done a lot with it, but we can do more. And if we hate what we end up doing, well, there’s the nuclear option of hitting the rental listings. My plan for Exceed Apartmental Expectations is as follows:

1) Get the bigger storage space. Paying an extra $60 a month is a lot less than $600, and we’ll have room for some of the changes listed below.

2) Pack up the books. We have at least 80 feet worth of shelving for books, most of which we don’t read on a regular basis. Pare down the books to two shelves, ship the rest to the storage space, when we get a place with a library, we can break them back out again.

3) Pack up the DVDs. We have most of our DVDs in binders, but three shelves’ worth of our favorites. We don’t need them to be visible anymore. Four shelves down to one.

4) Here’s the biggun: move the baby into the bedroom, and the bed into the sunroom. Here’s our current layout:

You might remember from awhile back, when I said the reason we didn’t want the nursery in the sunroom was because we wanted that extra space and privacy for us, and that’s true. But our needs have changed, and so we’re seriously thinking about making the leap to full two-bedroom status. If we move her into the bedroom, she’ll have a quiet space and a door. Moving our bed into the sunroom might be weird for guests, but as it is, we’re hardly inviting anyone over at night because her nursery is so close to the living room. We’ll have to move the computer somewhere–or get that laptop we’ve been talking about–and it’s likely we’ll have to keep our clothes in the bedroom. But having that extra aural privacy for her (and thus us in the evenings) could go a long, long way in making us less like slaves to rent control, and more like adults with a two-bedroom apartment.

We’ll see what happens on days like today, when RocketMan’s sleeping in late. But this all drives home my favorite part of renting: nothing’s ever permanent.

DIY Coffee Table: The beater edition

RocketGirl75 — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:40:33 +0000

Sometime in 2004ish, I visited RocketMan in his apartment to find a giant plank of wood: about 2 inches thick, 6 feet long, sturdy but scratched.

“What’s that?”

“I found it in the garbage room.”

“Oh. What’s it for?”

“I don’t know. It’s a good piece of wood, though.”

“OK.”

At that point, he had two chairs that he’d picked up off the street, so I knew he had a knack for street treats; this was the first in a long line of trash treats, though, and it was merely a potential treat at that. A few months later, he propped said plank of wood on four4x4s and called it a coffee table. When I say propped, I mean propped; the wood lay balanced on the four posts, and a sneeze in the wrong direction would send the whole pile careening to the floor with a not-unloud thump. But he was trying it out, you see. The wood plank was auditioning.

After much cajoling on the parts of me and his friends, he finally granted the wood plank the role, and I came home one day (this was after I’d moved in) to find he’d taken the Gordian knot approach to building: get some big-ass bolts and just drill right through the sucker. The finished product looked like this:

See the bolts? I think he just got tired of trying to decide what to do and did anything, something for which I’m very proud. Sometimes you just gotta decide to decide and deal with the consequences. In the case of the coffee table, it did us very well for several years. No, the wood was not a high-polish beauty, but she was sturdy, and she worked–and even though you see coasters in that picture, free wood from the trash room doesn’t really garner a sense of “CAREFUL!” in the owner; we try to keep her free of coffee rings, but if it happens, it happens.

Fast forward a few years, and we began to realize a few things about the coffee table: First, it was a shin-banger. For me, anyway. I tend to cut corners from time to time (read: every day, always), and the corners on this beast were brutal. Secondly, it was a beast. Like HUGE for our room. So about two years ago, he got out the table saw and took off about three inches from the right side, rounded the corners, and attached pipes as legs. For a year or so the coffee table lived as a mule, a mutant with two steel legs and two wooden, with one square side and one round. Alas, we have no photographs of that stage, so you’ll have to believe me that the mutant had her own special charm.

Finally, last year, with RocketBaby in utero and our apartment feeling smaller by the day, RocketMan finished the genetic experiment and fully transformed the beast into a beauty. (OK, a slightly more elegant beast.) Out went the last of the 4x4s; out went the last sharp corners; in came more pipes.

We're such grownups now. We have a couch! And burp cloths!

If this looks familiar, it is: he used the same method for building our bed last year.

No more sharp corners; slightly downsized; still stable as ever; and it’s light enough now that we can slide it to the side during the day to maximize play space. We have plans to install some bins underneath to store toys. And best of all, with the Agent of Chaos roaming around, new set of teeth at the ready, we have few worries about her destroying our beautiful coffee table. Worst case scenario? We’ll have to buy the next plank of wood to make a new one.

The Rocket Guide to Cheap, Fast, Unattractive Babyproofing

RocketGirl75 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:52:50 +0000

Now, you may have noticed over the last year or so that while we’re by no means Apartment Therapy-ready, we try to inject a certain aesthetic into our apartment enhancements. The vacuum cleaner lamp sheds a nice light, but we like the way it looks. The bar is cobbled together from a lot of stuff around the house, but again, it fits in our apartment nicely. And I think we’ve made our hallway nursery pretty darned cute.

But sometimes, one has to chuck form out the window settle on pure function. Such as it is with babyproofing. I imagine it’s the same even in a big home, but in a small apartment, there’s no room to corral the kid once she’s mobile, and it becomes a constant game of trying to stay a step ahead. I’m reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park in which Robert Muldoon, Human Action Figure, tells about how the velociraptors have been attacking the fences to test their integrity. “They remember.”

That’s her. She remembers. When she’s looking at you, she’s figuring things out. How can I open this drawerful of batteries and swallow one whole? How can I dismantle the printer-copier? How can I open and close this door until my fingers get squished? And most important, How can I get into the kitchen? So here we are, left alone in the raptor paddock, trying to get all the systems back online before she figures it out. It needs to be fast, and it’s often not pretty. You’ve seen the movie. One false move and you end up stuffed in a locker, missing an arm.

Of course, all the solutions below are temporary, which is to say, we’ll keep them until we figure out a more attractive way to keep her from injuring herself. Parents have two options: babyproof ahead of time and raise the kid in a padded cell, or manage the danger spots as they become apparent. We’ve chosen the latter; here are the results. (I’ll update when we come up with our Pricier, Better, More Attractive Solutions.)

Tie It Down

Remember the accordion door to the nursery? Lovely item, but as I suspected, it’s irresistible to her current open-and-close habit. Same goes for the credenza drawers. In the former case, a couple of hooks and a bungee cord keep the door immobilized. In the latter case, a long string fastened with a little push-catch (the kind on hoodie strings) keeps the drawers closed and easily reopened. When it came to the credenza doors, we just moved half of the photo albums and filled it with her toys. Gotta let the kid have some fun.

The ol' bungee-cord-strapping-down-the-accordion-door trick.

If you can't beat 'em, put some toys in it.

She can almost get her fingers pinched, but at least she can't take out the chokables hidden inside.

MacGyver a Pegboard

Yup, the pegboard’s back–it’s not just for kitchens and tool sheds. (Especially if you happen to have three or four pegboards stacked in a closet.) In this case, we have pegboards, hook screws and that ol’ favorite, the twisty tie. The printer was the first thing we babyproofed, by the by–it started on the bottom shelf, then moved up, then was covered by a piece of wood slid in front, and when she got around that, we went with the pegboard solution. As you can see, she’s clever enough to know how to work it, but she doesn’t have the strength or balance to get under it to the goods. Yet.

Here’s the printer pegboard:

Damn you, reflective surface in which she can see her face!

And at the base of our bar, where we keep our glass jars:

Use a… deli container?

So we know the curse of the pre-war apartment is the Curse of One Outlet Per Room, but corollary to that curse is “All electrical workings shall live OUTSIDE THE WALL!” That means several things: 1) We have wires everywhere; 2) The few outlets we do have are loaded with heavy-duty power-strip plugs; and 3) The outlets and power cords stick out at least four inches from the wall, making them both grabbable and even an excellent boosting mechanism. On top of, of course, gnawable.

I came home one day from work to find this ingenious, awful-looking contraption:

"Deli Container With Outlet" -- ca. 2010

I can’t be entirely sure, but I think that had fruit salad in it the day before. The weird thing is, it works. The plastic makes a nice noise but it’s too much of a bother to get around (for now). By the by, if anyone has connections on a giant, box-shaped outlet cover that hinges up and allows us to get at the plugs underneath, let me know.

The Classic Gate

No babyproofed home would be complete without the wooden baby gate. We have one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. She really, really dislikes them both.

First you put me in a clown suit. Now you won't let me dig through the recycling?

Most babyproofing, we’ve found, is more a matter of habit: don’t leave the coffee mug on the coffee table. Don’t leave the bedroom door open (unless refolding your clothes is a favorite pasttime). Develop an eye for chokables–the current standard is to put it in a film canister, which makes me wonder: 30 years from now, how will Eliza test what’s chokable? Oh, right. App.

Deceptachair gets a makeover!

RocketGirl75 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:38:39 +0000

If you’ve been following this blog awhile—we’re talking a year here—you might remember The Deceptachair. It’s a high chair. It’s a chair. It’s a walker. It’s a potty seat. It’s from a company called Storchenmuehle (inventors of the carseat) and we’re pegging it for early-to-mid-70s. The Deceptachair has held up well over time, but 30 years’ worth of baby food and schmutz had dingified the vinyl covering until it looked less than hygienic.

I knew from the start we’d need to add a safety belt, a hunch confirmed by the first few weeks’ worth of use: the Agent of Chaos found that she could turn herself completely around in the chair, and if she did manage to keep both of her fat little legs under the tray, it only took a bit of squirming to start the inevitable scooch-to-fall event that would confirm that buying a vintage high chair was a terrible idea. It was beginning to seem as though we’d need to invest in a new high chair.

She's annoyed she can't pick at the cover anymore. Doesn't she look furious?

Enter RocketMan and His ToolKit Of Tricks, and me with my twice-yearly urge to be mildly crafty, and Deceptachair got a makeover. First up: a safety strap. RM never takes pictures while he’s working (WTF, I keep saying; doesn’t he know the blogosphere NEEDS him?), so I’ll do my best to describe the process:

Get clear plastic tubing, the kind that college kids use in beer bongs. Slit it lengthwise.
Insert a light dog chain.
Screw in a loop hook under the tray.
Hook it in place.
Realize it looks like you’re strapping your daughter in with a chain, and cover it all up in red decorative tape.
Cross “Will you PLEASE make a safety chain so she doesn’t kill herself? Like, today? PLEASE?” off the whiteboard.

Yes, we have a whiteboard. If I could marry a whiteboard, RocketMan would have some competition.

Enter me, Queen of the Craft Fail. I’m not getting into all the swearing and futzing and muttered “I HATE yous” that went into the faux-upholstery; all you need to know is, I had some leftover contact paper, scissors, and an exacto knife. And now we have a newly covered Deceptachair, clean and fresh, and if we ever want to show the world its gray faux-flannel underthings, I’m pretty sure some Goo Gone will tear away all my work in no time at all.

Product Review: The Pop-a-Tot!

RocketGirl75 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:44:38 +0000

Now that the Agent of Chaos is almost seven months old, we’ve moved into a new phase of baby gear: the not-quite-mobile baby stage. She’s sitting up, she likes assisted standing and bouncing, and she’s able to roll off of parental beds in a single nod of her melon-sized head. She’s outgrown her bouncer (which she loved), but not her swing (which she hated); in either case, sitting like a sack of potatoes is no longer a viable option.

Our options are endless: there’s the Jumperoo; the Johnny Jump-Up (which I keep wanting to call the Johnny Walker); the Exersaucer and all its spinoffs. Months back the RocketMan and I purchased the Deceptachair, but she hasn’t grown into the walker part of it just yet, so we needed some kind of stationary, stable play area that would exercise her sausagey legs and keep her hands and eyes busy.

Problem is, small apartment. Smaller nursery. Weirdly wide doorjambs, so the Johnny Jump-Up doesn’t clamp on our widest doorway. And the Exersaucer is roughly the size of our dining room table. So I took a chance and googled “portable exersaucer,” and somehow landed on this terrible website (really, folks, try some cross-browser CSS programming) selling one of these no-brainer inventions that’s made at least five people I know say, “Man, why didn’t I invent that?”

Here, I present to you: The Pop-a-Tot, which proves that small apartment dwellers can, when in need, take their cues from the people who know from small spaces: campers and sailors.

It’s like an Exersaucer, in that she sits in it and can bounce, and it has cupholders for sippy cups, and loops for attaching toys. Its superpower? It collapses like a camping chair. Into a bag you can sling over your bloody shoulder! We can take it with us to our friend’s house! We can collapse it and stuff it in the corner! We can hide it under the bed! We can take it to the park!

Sure, her legs are too short to reach the fabric, so we have to slide a big pillow underneath it. Sure, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Evenflo Farmyard Exersaucer Mega. But she’s pleased as punch to sit in it for up to 20 minutes at a time (30 if we’re playing peekaboo). According to the website, it’s been tested six ways to Sunday, so safety isn’t a concern; I worried that she’d pinch her fingers in the crossbars, but straps on the front keep the whole thing pretty damn unfoldable when it’s expanded. All for the bargain price of $49.99.

I do take issue with the colors available on the site—we bought “Primary Colors” (since when is purple a primary color?), and the other fashionable choices are Pink Leopard, Camo with Green Trim, and Camo with Brown Trim; if I’m camping in the woods, I don’t think I’d want to put my baby in a camo carrier, but that’s just me. And like I said, the site needs some serious improvement if they want their business model to take off. But they do have this nifty animation, and if this doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will:

How cool is that?

Just in time for no sleeping, a new bed!

RocketGirl75 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:23:37 +0000

The underside of the bed, plus Dave's feet.

I’d planned on blogging this earlier, but life (specifically, new life) interfered. For going on six months or so, RocketMan had been saying he wanted to build a bed—something with storage underneath. Weeks passed, months passed, and as I neared my due date and mentioned we’d better get a move on the big projects, he roped a friend into hauling plywood from Lowe’s, and at long last, after a lifetime of twin beds, futons, and a box-spring base, I’m actually sleeping on a queen-sized bed. Like, one with legs and everything.

The construction couldn’t be simpler: two sheets of plywood fastened together with 1x4s, all mounted on lengths of pipe (capped with rubber to protect the hardwood floor). Not only is sleeping more comfortable on the harder surface, but we have 12 inches of height under there, resulting in an additional 30 square feet of storage space—no small feat for a 680-SF apartment. (That’s 4% of the floor space, if you’re doing the math.)

From CRT to LCD, at last!

RocketGirl75 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:13:03 +0000

Before: The Beast

We’ve been saying for months that we’d like to get a new television. The idea was purely for upgrade’s sake–our four-year-old JVC 27″ worked just fine. But it weighed in at 40 pounds and measured two feet deep, so abandoning it in favor of a sleeker, thinner model was just too tempting (even though we agreed having an earthquake-proof television isn’t such a bad thing). So July 4th weekend, we headed over to Video Only on Van Ness, then ended up at Best Buy down in the Mission, and came home with Best Buy’s store-brand 32″ LCD TV, the Insignia. We paid barely more for it than we did for the JVC when we bought it, and though the picture isn’t as clear as the CRT TV was, it has all the other amenities we’d hoped for: no digital antenna box necessary, easily hooked up, and best of all, hangable.

After two weeks of experiments, we’re still in progress (we’d like to get something to cover up the tangle of wires at the top) but our home entertainment system has been lifted off the floor, installed into shelves, and will be out of prying hands’ reach for at least another two years. Most important, though, is that we gained a full eight square feet of floor space in one of the more visible areas of the living room! (And our old JVC found a very good home, as well.)

Since the TV mounting arms cost from $80 (Video Only) to $150 (Best Buy, my ass), RocketMan got out his toolbelt and began sifting through the various planks of wood we have laying around the apartment. Wainscoting has been a much-used feature in our apartment—holding candles, clocks, Christmas ornaments, and at one point, an art installation of milk cartons— so he put it to work again. It’s as simple a setup as you can imagine: a plank of wood, strong hooks, and metal straps screwed into the back of the television. And it cost us nothing, as we had all that stuff around (we’re guessing it would cost in the range of $15-20 if you bought everything at the hardware store). And, yes, we performed our usual stress tests: shaking it, swinging it, and pulling on it, and it passed. Don’t know how it’ll fare if a 40-lb person decides to hang like a monkey from it, but I doubt even the factory-produced mounting arms are tested for that.

After: The Beauty

Enter shelving: RM’s new favorite method, the metal spine-and-bracket method, worked brilliantly, and the spine even supports the unit’s power strip out of sight, behind the TV; with all the wires running along the wainscoting and molding, no wires come close to the floor, and most are hidden from sight. FYI, the reason the cords run along the wainscoting into the next room is simple: between our sun room and living room, we have exactly three two-cord outlets. Those outlets power the entertainment system, computer and lighting setup. Don’t worry, I dry my hair in the bathroom’s one outlet. Gotta love prewar buildings!

The entire unit (not counting the television, of course) cost about $50, although I don’t have a full itemized list since so much of the wood and pieces were pirated from other projects. Much better than the $80-plus-$200 installation fee the Video Only guy was trying to charge us. And one of the bonuses of building the stuff yourself? If it breaks, replacement is much cheaper. Especially if you pay for the extended four-year warranty on the TV, as we did.

DIY Wine Rack II: Taller, Thinner, Less Cardboard

RocketGirl75 — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:59:02 +0000

Wine Rack I

My second blog, way back, was about our custom-built combo bar, cookbook shelf, and wine rack. (Cocktail Hour, January 15, 2009) The wine rack itself was made of stacked cardboard tubing; it worked well, but didn’t fit bigger Pinot Noir and champagne bottles. An unpredicted drawback was that the space for it was limited. Who knew that, six months later, we’d have found our wine collection quadrupled?

It makes sense, of course: In the last 32 weeks, I’ve drunk the equivalent of maybe 1 1/2 bottles of wine; compare that to my one-or-more-bottles-a-week habit. A glass or two of wine with dinner adds up. I feel a bit guilty about that, actually. Not about cutting out the booze, but about depriving the nice folks at the Bush Market of a considerable Rocket-based profit margin in the middle of a recession.

In any case, in the last three weeks, we’ve come into two cases of wine: one from RocketMan’s brother-in-law, an amateur vintner who basement-bottled a very nice red blend that’s fruity but well-balanced. Another case came from CrushPad, an organization here in San Francisco in which participants pick grapes, taste various wines, and basically create their own wines. Throw those on top of the other bottles I’m not drinking, and we suddenly have a wine collection.

The new specs were simple: upgrade from cardboard; make the cylinders wide enough for fat-bottomed bottles; move it out of the bar. (One of the other motivators was our slow-cooker, which is a huge piece of equipment that had heretofore been living in our credenza.) After some research, RM found a version of the wine rack we were looking for in ReadyMade magazine (their example even had a chalkboard running up the side!). Off RM went to (guess?) Cole Hardware, where he bought two pine boards and a length of PVC pipe. After a day’s worth of sawing, measuring and a few restarts, we have our final product: a tall, slender wine rack that is attached to, but separate from, the bar, and one that stood our 6.5 test, as well. (Involves RM shaking the whole thing for at least 30 seconds.) The cylinders aren’t just stacked in there; he inserted long bolts every six holes to affix the sides firmly.

We’ll update a few months after I give birth, when it’s half empty.

What’s almost as good as midcentury modern? Arts and crafts!

RocketGirl75 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:31:55 +0000

Once again, the Alameda Flea Market came through for us. We headed out yesterday with one goal: find a rocking chair built to the specifications listed in my last rocking chair blog. I sat in about a dozen rocking chairs yesterday (poor me!), and as with any piece of furniture, our primary goal was to strike a balance between comfort and looks.

The first chair we thought about rated a 9 on the comfort scale, and a 3 on the looks scale. Alas, I didn’t think to take a picture, but imagine worn used-to-be-mint-green upholstery, a wide, alien-head-shaped back, squat bottom, and pounds of overstuffed comfort. And, best of all, a $40 pricetag. After playing the get-up-sit-down game a few hundred times, we decided to keep walking a few rows until we found something more our style. As our friend put it, it was shabby chic, except not chic.

That was in row CC. (All the way in the back.) By the time we got to row X—about an hour later—my legs had begun having an avid conversation with my back, and I don’t know what the topic was, but I have the distinct feeling my back is libertarian to my definitely socialist legs. I was slowing down, and I knew we’d have to make a decision. “Two more rows,” I said, “and we’ll go back for the chair.”

Rounded another corner, and there she was: a sturdy arts-and-crafts Mission style rocking chair, with faux leather upholstery, tagged at $60. Far smaller than the Green Monster, but less cozy, and leaps more attractive. It could use some TLC, for certain; the wood could use a good polish, and we’ll need to prop a pillow in the back. But it rated a 7 on the comfort scale, a 7 on the looks scale, and a 10 on the price scale, and besides, what California home doesn’t need an arts and crafts rocking chair? We paid for the chair on the spot and came back for it an hour later.

Extra bonus: we found a Le Creuset fireproof casserole for $33, which cooked up some lovely scalloped potatoes last night.

The Teacher's Pet, The Spitfire, The Rocket Girl, and The Assassin

One last note: Saturday night three Devil-Ettes and I played hostess at a benefit for Creativity Explored, an art studio for developmentally disabled adults in the Mission; we did coat check and danced in the window a bit. And only three people figured out I was pregnant—a bartender actually offered me absinthe. The girls tried to tell me was a compliment, but I think everyone just assumed I had an ill-fitting costume. The bonus of having a night off of visible pregnancy, though? I can eat salami and cheese from the platters without worrying about getting the hairy eyeball.

Our $70 Kitchen Renovation

RocketGirl75 — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:36:33 +0000

If you remember from way back in January, I started this blog by giving Le Tour Grande of our kitchen—all 7′ by 6′ of it. While everything above the counter was in reasonably good condition (everything organized and more or less reachable), I didn’t get into the details of the below-the-waist goings-on. One particular corner of our little cucina was particularly shameful: the space between the stove and the wall.

In any home, I wouldn’t want to go fishing around behind the stove; in an old apartment, with no hood over the stove, no counters flush with the stovetop, and all manner of old electrical wiring and piping, no man can know what festers back there. So I’ll simplify by saying Grease + Dust + City Soot * Unreachable, Uncovered Space = Mung. (Mung was a word we used during my NYC days. Two kinds of dirt exist in New York: Schmutz and mung. Schmutz brushes off, like dust. Mung does not.)

Our particular mung magnet was occupied by a little shelving unit (built by RocketMan) that, in any other kitchen, would have been a lovely butcher block. Four wood shelves, supporting by pipes, with wheels at the bottom. Because the sides were open, though, anything that went on the shelves was open to the Mung Invasion, and anything that went in the back of the shelves—crockpot, muffin tin, empty jars—came out feeling a bit like a sticky kiwi. And because I have the memory retention of a two-year-old, I would find myself thinking “We should get a muffin tin” every time I went into Sur La Table.

Enter RocketMan. We decided to build a new shelving unit that would better meet our needs:

Enclosed, so as to keep the mung at bay;
Flush with the stovetop, so as to prevent splashbacks and food from falling in the crack;
Sliding shelving, so we could reach deeper items without having to move the unit or dig for it;
Wheeled

I’ll spare you the photos of what the space looked like after we pulled out the shelf. People have open, airy kitchens will be horrified by our seeming lack of housekeeping skills, and people with kitchens like mine already know exactly what I mean; let’s leave it there. With our specs in hand, I headed off to code software, and RM headed off to schlep lumber. Mine is a rough life.

The Miracle of the Sliding Shelves

Several trips to Cole’s Hardware later, and we had this finished product. It’s light; it’s enclosed; it’s exactly the height of the stove. Lastly, wonder of wonder, miracles of miracles, it has shelves. That glide. Those of you who do not find this miraculous have never wrestled with the wooden drawers in our kitchen’s only built-in: drawers that have no wheels, no brackets, no metal innards, and therefore require nothing less than brute strength to yank them open. And here, in my sixth month of pregnancy, my husband hath hunted and gathered, and brought to our homestead shelves that glide frictionlessly, like a Penguin on a freshly Zambonied rink.

It’s a simple construction: Two sheets of plywood for the sides, pegboard for the back; plywood shelves; and basic wheeled drawer slides. The first time I pulled out the shelf to grab a can, I had to repeat the process three or four times to confirm that, yes, RocketGirl, there is a Santa Claus, and he wears a toolbelt.

The Aftershocks

After filling the shelves, I turned to see we’d actually committed to a real reorganization of the kitchen. We have so many items on shelves that to put them in an easily accessible space, out of sight, cleared off at least three shelves, and allowed us to move the heavy objects from the highest shelf above the door (the one I feared would cause death by bucket o’couscous). And RM hasn’t even started his second shelving project, in which he performs the miracle of Getting the Cookie Sheets Off the Floor and Onto a Real Shelf. He did, however, throw in this blender shelf.

Here’s the price breakdown. The wood for the sides came from another shelving unit in the kitchen (the one he’s rebuilding next), and the wheels came from the original piece.

Item	Price	Total
20″ Drawer Slides (12)	$10.50/pair	$31.50
3/4″ Plywood Sheet	$30	$30
Pegboard Sheet	$7	$7
	TOTAL:	$70