We had a small opening on the side of our built-in oven wall (approximately 5 inches in depth). My wife complained that her spices were all over the place in her pantry, and there was no dedicated place to put them. Her spices were difficult to find and expiring while sitting in the pantry. As a result, I designed and built her a spice rack. It is over six feet tall, has adjustable shelves, and lights up with rope lights. Every person who has seen this says they want one. Some of the challenges I ran into were how to make the doors light enough to not sag (given their height), what to use for the "windows" so as not to make the doors too heavy, how to ensure both tall and short spice jars will fit, and how to make it fit into the current design of the kitchen.
My solution – I used plexiglass in place of glass for the windows, and made the doors of light weight pine boards. I drew and cut the curves around each window. Each plexiglass pane is held in place by grooves that I cut into the framing of each window. Each shelf has a small lip on the edge to ensure the spices stay securely in place. The rope lights are powered by a built-in light switch on the outside wall. Each plexiglass panel was hand drawn and hard painted using paints made especially for glass. Once each panel was painted, they were spray painted with a special paint to make them looked like frosted glass.
I learned the benefit of proper design which allowed me to develop this useful spice rack…resulting in a very happy wife. Now, my next challenge, my daughter wants the same thing in her kitchen.
We had a small opening on the side of our built-in oven wall (approximately 5 inches in depth). My wife complained that her spices were all over the place in her pantry, and there was no dedicated place to put them. Her spices were difficult to find and expiring while sitting in the pantry. As a result, I designed and built her a spice rack. It is over six feet tall, has adjustable shelves, and lights up with rope lights. Every person who has seen this says they want one. Some of the challenges I ran into were how to make the doors light enough to not sag (given their height), what to use for the "windows" so as not to make the doors too heavy, how to ensure both tall and short spice jars will fit, and how to make it fit into the current design of the kitchen. My solution – I used plexiglass in place of glass for the windows, and made the doors of light weight pine boards. I drew and cut the curves around each window. Each plexiglass pane is held in place by grooves that I cut into the framing of each window. Each shelf has a small lip on the edge to ensure the spices stay securely in place. The rope lights are powered by a built-in light switch on the outside wall. Each plexiglass panel was hand drawn and hard painted using paints made especially for glass. Once each panel was painted, they were spray painted with a special paint to make them looked like frosted glass. I learned the benefit of proper design which allowed me to develop this useful spice rack…resulting in a very happy wife. Now, my next challenge, my daughter wants the same thing in her kitchen.
