In case you missed it, here are the previous links for this now-completed project:
Yesterday I painted the spice rack – it’s looking amazing! And today – my 43rd Birthday – it’s DONE! Hanging it up is my birthday gift to myself 🙂
So this morning, 4am. Darwin [probably knowing it was my birthday], stealthily hauled his fat butt up onto the bookcase next to my side of the bed, took 2 loud bites of my plant, waited for me to open my eyes, then launched onto my face in his frenzy to get away before I could grab the squirt gun… [“Bite the Plant and Bolt” is one of his favorite games, although he usually waits for daylight, pretends to bite the plant, and doesn’t land on my face]. A few seconds later, Bonkers, realizing Mommy was awake, started his pitiful meowing to let me know how desperately hungry he was [even though we leave a big bowl of dry food out for them overnight].
Somehow hubby slept through all that… so, since I was WIDE awake by this point, I decided it was time to hang the spice rack! I hurried downstairs, fed the furry children, scrounged 2 little circle hooks out of the tool chest, removed the little portraits of vegetables that have hung over the kitchen table since my husband moved into the condo, measured the distance between the existing nail holes‡, attached the hooks, and hung the spice rack!!! I love it!
After transferring the spices from the cupboard to the rack, I stood back and admired my work. It’s SUCH a luxury to have all the spices lined up where I can easily see them! No more hunting and pecking in the cabinet, and no more flash rages where I tear all the spices out of the cabinet looking for the one I know is in there, that is always somehow near the front, even though I swear I’ve already checked all the front ones.
So this morning, 5:15am. Hubby woke up, admired our new spice rack, and gave me my birthday present:
A Black and Decker 20-Volt 4-Tool Combo Kit including a CIRCULAR SAW [happy squeak], a saws-all, a new drill, a huge flashlight that will basically never die, and an adorable note. I’m SO PSYCHED! Best hubby EVER. Now I need to clear out our basement cage so I can transform it into a work space with a bench and tool rack 🙂
I bought 5 pieces of 3/8″ x 3/4″ x 6′ wood [closest thing my hardware store had to wood suitable for a spice rack]. I cut them into 10 24″ pieces and 3 22″ pieces [and had some left over for my cat ramp]. I laid down 5 of the 24″ pieces on the floor, horizontally, so the skinnier side was facing up [aka the 3/8″ side]. I measured the spacing between them based on the 2 designs I found online, so I’d have a smaller shelf on top, a larger shelf on the bottom, and 2 middle sized shelves between. Then I laid down the 3 22″ pieces on top, vertically, with the wider [3/4″] side facing up. I carefully nailed all the joins together. It was tricky to nail into the skinnier side of the wood for the shelves, but I wanted the wider side to be facing up when the spice rack was on its feet. Then I laid the remaining 5 24″ pieces on top, skinny side up, and carefully nailed each join. This leaves nail holes only on one side, which was a happy accident for me! I don’t have any pictures midway through the process because I got so involved in the careful nailing that I forgot!
I think if I was going to do it again, I’d make the 2 middle shelves 5″ apart, and the bottom shelf 7″ instead of 6″.
I normally would have given it 2 coats of paint [I give everything 2-3 coats of paint before declaring it done], but it was SUCH a bitch to paint! Lots of nooks and crannies and places for paint to drip and start drying before I noticed it. Grrrrr. I had to keep turning it upside down and backwards every few minutes looking for wayward drips. At the time, I was thinking that I really should have painted the strips of wood before nailing them together. But last night I primed and painted 3 more strips of wood to add as a border to the cat platform [which should be ready to reveal tomorrow!], and they suck just as much to paint when they’re alone as they do when they’re all nailed together. So I’m not sure which way is actually easier. I guess it’s better to paint them before nailing them together, since then you’re guaranteed a nice, flat, even coat of paint on each piece. Eh. Live and learn – that’s what DIY is all about!
The house we live in is 297 years old. Well, technically only our kitchen is 297 years old, the rest of our condo was added to the back of the original house sometime in the 80’s. The kitchen wall where I hung the spice rack is part of the 297-years-old original wall of the house, and I swear is made of rocks covered in drywall. Nails will not go in. Screws will not go in. Last year I got pissed at it because I wanted to hang something else up on the wall, so I found a HUGE nail in the basement and slammed it into the wall as hard as I could. All I managed to do was bend the nail at a 90 degree angle, open a 3 foot diagonal crack in the drywall, and send a large reverberation pain shooting up my arm kind of like when you’re at the driving range and you hit the ground instead of the ball… So anyway, Jim did manage, somehow, to get 4 small nails to stick in the wall a few years ago [if you bang in enough nails, eventually some will stick]. So I didn’t want to try to move his nails, for fear I’d never get any in again. So I measured the distance between the existing nails and screwed the circle hooks into the spice rack at the same interval. Problem solved 🙂
WOW!