Create the Look: Upcycled Spice Rack Wall
Little adjustments within a home can save a surprising amount of space— like this secondhand spice rack, fixed up a bit, painted, and now living out its new life in the kitchen of our 900 sqft cottage. (When pressed for space, go vertical if it’s safe. The best, untapped storage options are often UP.)
By request, here’s the latest Create the Look… but I don’t want everything I publish to be shoppable. I don’t wan’t to earn income by constantly encouraging people to buy more, when I know that most of us can (and should, for environmental reasons,) live with less. What I do want is for folks to be comfortable, confident and content in their small homes or apartments. And I want to be a resource for reliable ideas that can help you spend less time searching for your stuff, and more time with the ones you love.
So when people ask where I got something that’s in our home, I usually point them to similar handmade and vintage designs. As such, for folks who inquired about this little cabinet: here are some secondhand items and independent online storefronts with handmade goods that can help you recreate this look in a sustainable way that suits YOUR needs and YOUR style.
Built-In Kitchen Step Stool
Our new kitchen might be on the smaller side, but our countertops are on the (much) taller side. As a family full of folks 6’ tall and over, we’ve spent countless hours stooping over sinks and hunched over cutting boards. But no more!
One of the greatest perks of designing our little cottage from scratch was the ability to design surfaces to better suit our needs (and ease our aches). However, we have two young children and wanted to be sure they’d retain the ability to reach faucets and handle essential items on their own as needed.
In consideration of this, we’ve worked a number of unique features into our interior, one of them being a space-saving, retractable step-stool at the soon-to-be-skirted kitchen sink.
We mentioned this concept to the wonderful carpenter who has been bringing our vision to life, and he further magicked it into this design. The stool is as wide as the sink (about 22”), and features two levels of tread.
The track keeps everything from sliding side to side, and we held on to the kids while they first tested it out so that they have a better understanding of how to climb up and down safely with the retractability in mind.
Our oldest is already a pro. Our youngest will take supervising for some time, but at her age that’s the case pretty much anywhere.
It’s a work in progress, of course, but within the next two weeks it should all be wrapped up and we’ll soon be moving in!
Small Kitchen Storage
Do you have a small kitchen? Don’t overlook valuable storage space that could be hiding in plain sight — like the top of your fridge.
