Hanging in There

I've always been a little clumsy, and home improvement projects tend to bring out my inner klutz. In the last two weeks I've bumped my head (twice), banged and bruised my knee, smashed my toe, squished my finger, broken every nail I have, and stepped on an industrial size plug with bare feet. Rest assured, none of these mishaps has caused any serious injury, but I have kindled a close friendship with ibuprofen. Still, minor injuries only create momentary setbacks as projects continue to move forward. Today (I'm happy to report.) I put the top coat on the cabinetry for the guest bath and kitchen island. This means that tomorrow morning (after the final 12 hour drying time elapses), I can replace the doors, admire my handy work for a few moments, and move on to the lower kitchen cabinets.

In the meantime, I managed to accomplish only a couple of small projects today (mostly because the boy and I goofed off for several hours this morning). First, I picked up some trim to finish off the tea cup niche which I covered with black and white toile fabric yesterday. I must say, the trim really sets off the fabric and the shape of the niche, making the project look polished and professional.

Next, I decided to install a spice rack I picked up at Walmart for a mere $12. This rack is particularly nifty in that it swivels down from the shelf to allow full view and easier access to the spices at the back of the cabinet. My only complaint is that some of my (mismatched) jars were too tall for the back rack, which left me with two options: raise the shelf above the rack, place the taller bottles in the front. Option one seemed out of the question since I couldn't budge the shelf supports (those silly little plastic ones that click in place and require huge amounts of pressure concentrated into nimble fingers). But once I moved the taller items to the front, all worked well.

Here's the rack tucked neatly inside the cabinet.
I centered it so that side space could be used for larger items like salt containers, extract bottles, etc.

Here's how the rack looks when it swivels down. Cool, huh?

The installation was pretty easy since it consisted of attaching a bracket to the bottom of the cabinet, slipping the rods on the back of the rack into the bracket, and then attaching the one on the other side. I have to admit, though, I had a couple of minor setbacks. First, I did not have the hand strength to simply screw the brackets into the wood. "Aha!" I thought, "I'll use Jeff's drill to create pilot holes!" However, the drill was too large to fit under the shelf above (and as I previously noted, there wasn't any way in Hades I could make it move). So, I decided to use a nail to create a small starter hole. (Eureka!) This worked like a charm and the screws when right into the cabinet base at last. (Yes, stick-to-it-ness prevailed again.) All in all, the whole thing took less than 30 minutes - even with the delays. Take a look at the finished project.

Here is everything resting neatly inside the cabinet.

The downward swivel provides easy access to items in the back.