Saturday, February 18, 2012

Shelves in the Utility Room

While I was away, Linda got a new dog. The dog needs lots of new things -- food, toys, stuff. Since the dog gets fed in the utility room, she put them all on the dryer. That's okay for short term, but longer term, we need a place to put them.

So in looking at what we have, it seems that most of the space where the freezer would go is being wasted. We don't have a freezer, and don't expect to, so the space for the freezer is mainly just laundry baskets and a small shelf on the side wall. Our solution was to take the small shelf off, and put in two new shelves -- running the full width of the space -- 40 inches wide. To leave room for hanging clothes, we only put in 12 inch deep shelves, and to leave plenty of room, the top shelf is 14 inches below the shelf above it, and the bottom shelf is 11 inches below that. We bought one 8 foot length of shelving and cut it to two 40 pieces (plus a left-over).



We moved the previous little shelf over onto the wall next to the dryer, so we can use the hook rack beneath it.



We also got a new support for the iron and ironing board, and moved those
over a bit.

Once that had settled in, we went back and got another hock rack to put next to the new shelves. We wanted to get a white wire one, but couldn't find a simple white wire set of hooks. This particular one is $20 from Target.



Putting this hook rack up was fairly easy -- there is a stud behind both supports. But whoever designed it was an idiot. Look at how the screws that hold it to the wall have to be. Putting in the top screw is easy, but the bottom screw has the first hook, and the rack right in front of it. How can you possibly use a screw driver to put the bottom screw in?




I used a Phillips head screw bit and a crescent wrench to turn it.