We bought this house impulsively and then spent a fair
amount of money on modernizing it before we moved in. A good friend, JMcI,
asked what it was we liked about it in the first place since we were changing
virtually everything. Never mind.
In the midst of completely changing the
kitchen and making sure all the lower cabinets were drawer units because we are
getting ancient, we were faced with the 24 inch pantry cabinet and the pullouts
would be $225.00 each. Times 6 is a whack of money for pull-outs so we said, “we’ll
make them ourselves after we move in”. Hah!
About every 6 months I floated the “what
about those units for the pantry” question because the back of the shelves was
like a black hole in space; especially the bottom one which required getting
down on the floor to investigate the nether regions. I’m pretty fit and agile
but, really, I was not interested in exploring that shelf.
Sometime in early December I upped the pressure and asked “the
question” at least once a week, sometimes several times a day.
That got the
project on “the list”, a mysterious entity that only Jim knows about. This
week, Thursday to be exact, after golf Jim drifted down to Lumber World
(supplier of the original cabinets) to see what the possibilities were. Lo and
behold they had a sale on and the now $250.00 each drawer units were discounted
to $89! Holy schmoley! My plan had been to use the existing shelves to create
the drawer boxes and buy the hardware at the Restore. Never mind again.
This
plan included purpose built boxes with spiffy DTC full-extension soft-close hardware
and they had 9 available.
Let’s be clear, the units were on a major discount but we still
forked out more than $500.00 which might be chump change to you but isn’t to
us. We needed 5 and jumped right in, picked them up yesterday, and Jim unpacked
a couple and started the hmmmm, how does this work dance. An hour later he’s
realized that 2 of the boxes and hardware are the wrong size and the salesperson
was gone for the weekend. Not to disparage Lumber World too deeply but there
are a few people there who are worth talking to and a few others who will not
give the lowly DIYer the time of day and on top of that are as dense as the bag
of hammers they might try to sell you.
Before she left, our salesperson, one of the useful ones,
sent a link to an installation video because no instructions came with the
items we bought. Never mind again; the link was to a different brand of
hardware. Sigh.
Google, YouTube, and Jim’s brain to the rescue and we have a
plan because 3 of the boxes and hardware are actually the right size! Sort of. The
third one needed some adjustment, being a half inch wider than it should have
been and with a set of locking holes drilled in the wrong place. Never mind
again, we can deal with that and did.
Understand we’re working in a 24” wide
space, 23” deep and had to install level blocking pieces and the drawer rails. Willing
and fabulous as Jim is he’s not small and dainty and flexibility is a fleeting memory so
this project was definitely a team effort with me folded up inside the cabinet
at one point holding the necessary piece in place while it was drilled and installed.
Besides having much more accessible space, the major success
was that we didn’t get scrappy with each other about the challenges. Jim was
particularly patient despite being wakened every hour on the hour last night by
the grandfather clock which I decided to activate yesterday. On our way to bed I
asked if he wanted me to stop it, he replied probably a good idea, but at 7:00
this morning I had that sinking lack of memory of following through. We already
know I can sleep through a bomb going off, a very funny story, and I grew up with that clock chiming
away, so hadn’t heard a thing. Never mind! He’s having a nap right now.
