Spice Niche

Over the last year and a half our life has revolved around with home projects, football, real estate, and of course our kids. With having 3 adults in the house and all of us cooking our way of storing spices and seasonings was NOT working.

In our old kitchen we kept them in a drawer and labeled the tops but with the new kitchen we shrunk the drawer sizes and lost the island so there was no place to store them. Although before we even began our remodel we had always wanted to do a Spice Niche in the pantry. It was the ideal spot, hidden but easy to get to and there was dead space on the wall.

So our project began with my husband taking his saw and making a large opening, we thought it would be to big but knew we could store other items as well.

 When we made it almost to the bottom we realized that the electrical wire was humped up where the extra piece of drywall was. So we notched out the wood to allow the cord to lay flat (non structural board) and cleaned up the edges.

The drywall in back is to the dining room and with the edge there we knew it needed something to cover it. Fortunately for us we had bead-board that we used for a quick basement wall and tore back out so we could access the wall anchors. It was the perfect use.

 Of course nothing goes as easy as you think, especially in an older home. And we thought the hard part was the electrical cord...haha. As I was cleaning out the hole I looked up and saw this....

It took us a minute to realize that we had just cut into the cavity for the return air from our room. After consulting with some contractor friends we came up with a way of rerouting the return air by cutting a hole (not easy to do) with a drill above and below the niche so it would still operate the same way but would take a small detour. For the record it has been a year and we have had no issues, actually it turned out we made it better than before because our room heats and cools more efficiently. After narrowly escaping that situation we quickly cut 1 x 4's and made a box to fit in the opening.

The middle shelf we made fixed to add extra support. He used a Kreg Jig to drill holes on each side for pins so we can adjust the shelves accordingly. Don't let him fool you, I did most of the painting. I only took a break to snap a picture and figure out what spices and seasonings we had ;)

 Turns out we had more than we realized...But they all fit and if we had duplicates (which we did) they were able to fit behind the other. And now it is easy to find everything! I sorted them alphabetically, and the guys get a kick out of switching them up every now and then to see if I notice (I do) It took almost exactly a year but we finally trimmed it out along with the rest of the pantry and Voila!

And we had many doubters that we had that many spices...truth be told we do use most of them frequently.

Until next time!