Building a Solution in My Own Kitchen
Even as a Feng Shui Practitioner, there are always ways to improve our homes, and lives for better functionality. We live in a decent sized two-story townhouse. Our kitchen is large, which I love. After our last apartment I refused to ever live with a galley kitchen again.
The thing is… it’s not laid out great. I wish the counter between the living room and kitchen was the same height. I wish there was at least one “wide” cabinet (and by wide, I mean normal width.)
I cook a lot. Like nearly every meal, nearly every day. I work from home so I either cook my lunch or heat up left overs (I do like to strategically batch cook.) I have four pieces of stoneware (think Pampered Chef) and a cast iron dutch oven that won’t fit in our cabinets. I used to store them in the oven, but since I’m constantly using the oven, I was constantly moving all these pieces that aren’t all that light. 
For years I looked for solutions. I looked at rolling islands, and kitchen carts, among other things. The islands either weren’t big enough to accommodate the pieces width wise or height wise, or couldn’t hold them all.
Suddenly inspiration hit. I sat down with a piece of paper and a tape measure and designed a cart for my kitchen. It’s the same height as my desk that it sits beside, and is big enough to hold not only my round stone, my stone cookie sheet, my stone loaf pans, and my cast iron dutch oven, but it also holds my cordless power tools and their chargers and batteries which were **ALL** over the house previously.
My space feels so much better. Partially because I’m just so dang pleased that those stones have a home and I don’t have to constantly move them, when I need the stove top, or the oven, or the sink, or somewhere to set something down. PFFFT, SO GLAD that’s over. Happy day.
I work on projects like this all the time and I will be beginning to feature them more.
Pictures and things I learned to follow.
This what we started with. I’m strategically lazy. I had the nice Lumber Employee at Lowe’s cut my pieces for me. (David had to trim a few.) I like to watch people run the saw rather than do it myself.
Building the first corner of my “box”.
Putting on the Slot Legs.
David said “What is this and what is it’s purpose?”
Obviously it was the base for my octopus.
Pudding checking my measurements.
Putting in my lower shelf.
David used a jig saw to cut and round my slot dividers and I got zero pictures somehow.
Finished and empty.
Finished and loaded. You can barely see my cookie sheet that is a very similar color to the cart, behind the round stone. The top row from the left is a finish nailer, impact hammer/drill, sander, glue gun & corner cat sander, and a jig saw. Batteries on bottom shelf, below loaf pan.
Side view of slots, from this angle, you can see the cookie sheet but not the round stone so well. Dutch oven in the back.
Back view where you can really see the cast iron dutch oven.
Things I learned, we put the whole system together aside from the slot dividers (they still needed to be cut). Should have waited to install the shelf they connected to until after they were in place. I had some tight angles in there and the third divider above the tall support piece, we had to drive by hand. :/
Overall we didn’t have many problems, except I had all those 2×1 bars, cut 3/4 inch too long. Fortunately that was an easy fix.
It took us about 4-5 hours total working on it. I was working on other parts while David did the sawing parts so maybe 8 man-hours. So wish I had done this sooner.
I’d love to know what you think or if you see room for adjustments.
Looking for solutions in your home? Join my Facebook group for 2 chances to win a Feng Shui Consult (and several other prizes) during February.
She has extensively studied Chinese medicine, Chinese face-reading, Nine Star Ki, and energy healing, as well as traditional design, and psychology.
A life-time student of life, Erica loves to read and learn new things. When she's not on the phone with her clients, you might find her at a locally owned coffee shop (not drinking coffee), or at one of the local libraries.
She lives just outside Nashville, Tennessee with her husband David, and her daughter, Riley, 4 cats: Princess Pudding Puff, the Scottish Fold, Niko, the chatty Russian Blue, Duchess, the dumpster cat, and David's kitten, Eva Marie.
- Health- The Heart of the Home: Feng Shui and Money- A Nine Week Book/Program - December 18, 2016
- Laundry Life Lessons - September 30, 2016
- The Effect of Anxiety - June 16, 2016
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