Homemaker Monday: To Design a Kitchen - Part Four

Welcome to...

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YOURS: This week's "YOURS" was posted by Kathryn over at The Kahumoku Ohana. She shows us, step-by-scrumptious-step, how to make lasagna...


This is making my mouth water just looking at it! She has some great ideas on how to make the process go faster and easier. Now that's my kind of recipe! Thank you so much, Kathryn, for joining us here on Homemaker Monday and please feel free to grab the "I was Featured" button on my left sidebar. For Kathryn's entire lasagna post, Click HERE. We'll look forward to visiting your blog often for some more great tips!

MINE: Part Four - The Food Storage Centers: The food storage for our family is located in three places throughout our home. Long term storage, such as wheat (which can be stored for 30 years or more), is kept in the basement. Bulk food storage, such a canned goods, paper towels, condiments, etc. is stored in a small room off of our kitchen. Everyday items, such as cereal, cooking oil, snack foods and peanut butter are stored in our kitchen right next to the fridge. Here's the set up...



This area was something I had a little trouble with and we didn't get it resolved until near the end of the planning process. I wanted a counter-depth fridge to give our kitchen a more custom, built-in look. I really didn't like the idea of having that stainless steel behemoth sticking out over a foot from our granite countertops, taking attention away from the design along that whole wall. John humored me and we went shopping. There were many counter-depth, stainless steel refrigerators at reasonable prices, but there was a down side. These counter-depth refrigerators were up to four cubic feet smaller than their full-size counterparts.

I begged John and reasoned with him that it would be okay, that we would just have to organize more carefully and we could just keep the extra stuff in our second fridge in the food storage room. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't listen. In this case, form would proceed function!

Then it happened. John performed the magic that he always does and fixed the problem. We could purchase the full-size fridge and have the cabinets custom-made to fit around the fridge. Our design would have all the glamour of the built-in, with the larger size our family needed. Have I mentioned before that my husband is a genius? Well he is... a genius...

The first thing we did was to have the carpenter make a two-inch wide, three-foot depth support on the left side of the fridge to support the upper cabinets...



He did an absolutely beautiful job of the hickory paneling.

Next, we asked him to build a 3' x 8.5' (3' depth) cabinet on the right side of the fridge, with a 2.5' x 3' (again, 3' depth) connecting the left support and right cabinets. Here is the side view of the cabinet on the right of the fridge...




We decided to use the back one foot space as a broom closet (as shown in the second photo above). Having cabinets 3' deep would have made it too difficult to access our food storage. We did, however, choose to leave the 3' depth in the overhead cabinets, as this makes perfect space to store tons of boxes of cereal from Costco. Seasonal and rarely used items can be stored above the fridge.

Here's how the pantry looks in use...


My favorite part about this pantry is the hinged shelf. Check it out...


My carpenter is amazing!

All righty then, that's it for now on my food storage. Next week we'll talk about the island!

If you missed any of the previous "To Design a Kitchen" installments, click below!
To Design a Kitchen - Part One
To Design a Kitchen - Part Two
To Design a Kitchen - Part Three

OURS: Okay, now it's your turn! Search your archives or write a new post especially for today and link up! If you have something holiday-y, we would LOVE to check it out. Thanks for coming today and have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!




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