The Cavender Diary

Neither of us are wine drinkers. The Good Lord knows that I prefer the occasional beer, and I push Jamie towards Rum and Coke for his “Peace and Quiet Juice”.

Sometimes, I will buy a bottle of wine if the label is cool.

You know, if there is something awesome on it, like a cowboy or a red truck.  ( I’m not joking here….those 2 images will Always get me to purchase )

Somehow we have ended up a with a pretty good assortment of wine….must be from hostess gifts.

I had a plan to create some sort of  “wine storage” over our pantry…..where there was nothing before. I don’t quite understand why the previous owner didn’t take the pantry all the way to the ceiling? Something had to be done in this wasted space.

When I saw this picture in a magazine, I was fascinated by the concrete tubes he used for wine. Look at how cool those graphic circles look in this kitchen. A little modern, a little rustic…..just like our style.

Aren’t they just groovy as all Hell? I know! We had to find a way to do this in our own kitchen; and that empty space over the pantry seemed like just the right spot.

I Googled concrete tubes…and nada came up. But ya know what did? PVC…HHmmm That could actually work.

• They’re cheap – about 15$ for 10 feet.
•  I could cut them easily to any size that I needed with the chop saw.
• A  4 inch thick pipe fits a bottle of wine just perfectly.
• They are light weight, so very little stress on the press-board cabinet

Just one slight problem with our plan….the space over the pantry is was only 12 inches tall. That’s hardly enough space to do more that 14 PVC pipes, and I would have to fill in a lot of empty space with trim pieces to make it all fit tight.

But ya know where they would fit? Over the fridge…. in this weird space

Remember the Ikea cabinet that didn’t have any corresponding doors? It’s 24 inches tall. I know! It’s almost as if it were “meant” to be.

We cut 10 Foot PVC pipes down to 10 inch sections. ..They only come in 10 foot pipes. 10 foot poles are a bitch to transport, but we live pretty close to H-Depot. I wish the cut pipes fit more perfectly linear, like my inspiration kitchen, but the staggered pipe is still kinda modern to me. Just slightly more “honey comb” looking.

Now we have space for 21 bottles or wine.

I had to move the shelf up just slightly. The pegs holes are staggered about every inch, and my pipes pushed the shelf up about 1/2 inch. No worries, all I had to do was drill 4 more holes directly in between where Ikea thought they should be. I could have ditched the shelf altogether and filled the whole cabinet with PVC tubes, but I didn’t want to over do it with the wine.

Then the extra peg holes started to bother me. It just didn’t look finished.

That’s Elmer’s Wood Filler in Natural. We had already used it to fill the holes where the old drawer handles used to be.

It’s not a perfect match with birch, but it works for us.

We ended up with something that looks more like this…

Pretty Cool, I know!

“And whatever became of that wasted 12 inches of  space over the pantry?” you ask.

We used an extra Ikea shelf, some 1X2 trim, and the disassembled pieces from the old cabinet over the microwave…..and came up with this to store cookbooks.

Tons Way, More, Better….Right?