Please help me find a place for my utilities..

13 years ago

When we built our house (moved in in January) I was a bit naive when it came to the cabinetry. I felt like there was plenty of cabinetry for everything, and despite my mother's constant plea to add a pantry (and not add a shelf), we just kind of trusted the cabinet maker and didn't have specific requests for the cab inets..

I truly love the kitc hen (and the house for that matter) but after living in it for 6 months there are things I am realizing I REALLy wish I had done differently..

Most importantly find a place for utilities.. There is no place in the kitchen to store my mops/brooms- we do have a teeny tiny mudroom off the kitchen with a closet which we currently use for shoes/coats. However, since the garage door and closet door open into each other, we will be taking out the closet and making a bench with shelving and baskets to avoid the constant collisions..

Up until now we have been leaving the mops in the stairwell to the unfinished basement, however we are now considering finishing the basement.

I don't want to store them in the garage. My laundry room is upstairs next to my bedroom. I do have a closet in there, but running up and down the stairs with them could get old (currently my central vac. is stored up there)..

Anyone have a CREATIVE idea as to what I can do?

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Comments (11)

judydel
13 years ago
Lily I went back and looked up some of your finished kitchen photos and I see that you have an empty wall adjacent to your dining table. What about having a long and narrow closet built there that can house all of your brooms, mops, etc as well as your cleaning supplies, light bulbs, etc.?
monkeymo
13 years ago
How wide is your closet in the mudroom? Could you install small sliding doors or a bifold door so it would avoid hitting the other door?
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Lexi, it sounds like you have what would appear to be a bulkhead above your cabinets, but it's hollow and is accessable from the top shelf of your upper cabinets. I know how you feel about unused space. We have a huge attic and it's driving me bonkers that we are not using it for storage at the very least. I finally did convince my hubby we need to utilize that space for the kids stuff we are storing for them, so he started to build up the joist to attach a floor to last fall. It got too cold then he worked a bit this spring, but ran out of time. I'm just waiting for cool enough weather now so he can finish it. I mean this could easily be a third floor it's so roomy. I'd be happy if all I had was your little problem. But I still understand and if I did this is what I'd do..... Take off the paneling and add a top to the cabinets. Yes it would be open space, but if you buy cute baskets with lids to store seasonal table linens in it would look cute and you'd gain storage space. I have a couple wicker picnic baskets that would work great for this. I found them both at garage sales for very little money.
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blondelle's plan has a lot of interesting ideas. Using it as the base plan, I'd suggest the following changes to it: Laundry/powder/office area-- Powder rm--fill in the wall where she has the door. Then stretch out the powder room so it's 7 to 7-1/2' long adjacent to her kitchen wall and 42" wide, with a pocket door on the right wall. Laundry--this will be outside the powder room, with the small window in it. There would be a door into the family room right next to where the powder room/family room wall ends. Opposite this door and wall would be an identical door and wall, with the office on the other side. Both laundry doors would be pocket doors. The laundry would measure about 7 to 7-1/2' x ~10 to 10-1/2'. Office--to the right of the door from the garage you could have a 4-6' wide coat closet with a 2+' wide cleaning closet next to it. Opposite it (on the back of the 42" powder room wall) you could have a bench with hooks/cubbies above it. The remainder of the room would be the office (about 9'x 10' with a chunk out of the corner due to the closets). Now for the kitchen: Keep the door from the original hall to the family room for easy access to the revised kitchen. Shorten the cabinets on her range wall from both ends from about 11' to about 8' in length. Put the range in the middle of the wall where the fridge was so it's out of the path of the kids. Facing blondelle's range wall, put the fridge on the right, the microwave to the left of it, and a bar sink to the left of it. May have to reverse the fridge and bar sink locations depending on the width of the kitchen. I'm not sure if the kitchen as reconfigured is wide enough for even a 2' wide island. On the back side of the end of the foyer closet and blondelle's fridge wall, put a hutch for dishes or floor to ceiling 12-15" deep cabinets to be used as a pantry. If there is room for the island, extend it so the end comes out as far as the hutch/pantry cabinets. Foyer: since this looks to be over 9'x9', and since the living room is so long, you might consider giving it a little bit of definition by putting an 18" square half wall coming out from each of the closet walls, with open shelves above. I remember some very pretty ones in Sarah Susanka's book The Not So Big House, I think on p. 100. (I liked that room so much that I memorized the page!) Family room: It might be a good idea to keep the wall between it and the dining room. With young kids it's sort of nice to be able to close the doors on the mess if they have their toys in there. Also, as they get older the wall will buffer some of the noise from them and their friends, and the TV if something is on and you don't want to watch it. With the bedrooms on the same floor, it also would keep things quieter when some people are still sleeping, especially when the TV is on. Many people find it very nice to have one of the "public" rooms on the first floor that can be closed off when needed. Also, if the wall remains, you could get a comfortable sofa bed for guests to sleep on. Sorry I can't draw this up for you, but maybe blondelle or someone else will be able to if there's merit to any of these suggestions. It would be very helpful to have the EXACT measurements of the kitchen and narrow hall combined. Can you measure it from the left kitchen wall through the doorway to the right hall wall? I can estimate it by using the scale, but it seems to be only 12-1/2' wide. That would be a little too tight for a built in island, with appliances in the cabinets on the walls opposite the island. However, a narrower long free-standing work table would work. Anne
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desertsteph
13 years ago
how about building (encasing) space in the stud area for the mops, brooms etc?
gillylily
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks for the suggestions..
Judy-are you talking about the wall the narrow wall space next to the slider or the other wall-the open wall adjacent to the table? If it is the large open wall, we have since built a dry bar (clearly more important than a pantry right..) but if it is the other wall, perhaps we could do that..

momkeymo- we have considered doing that with the mudroom door but it is really crowded in there. if we have a bench I feel like it might be a little less cluttered??

desertsteph- are you talking about the studs in the basement?

Thanks again for your suggestions!
jsweenc
13 years ago
Can you post some photos of the area you have to work with? As you saw, I ended up with just a 21" wall to work with for my mops and brooms. I repurposed a hook rack that had been in a bathroom for years. I had to tie strings on some of the implements because the holes on them were too small to fit on the hooks.

I really really wanted a tall pullout for cleaning supplies but had no space for it in the end. I love that I didn't spend a dime extra (compared to $1400 for those pullouts), and so far it works great. I'll know better after today when my friend who cleans for me has tried to reach the things on it -- she's a little shorter than I.

My point is that if you have a small bit of wall space you could put up a hanging rack of some sort. Another idea I had was to use one of the rail systems from IKEA, any one that comes with hooks. I like the Grundtal best, but last time I looked they didn't have them listed online anymore, so I wonder if they are D/C'd or I just missed them. Those kinds of hooks would give you lots of flexibility. The shortest one is 21", I believe.
shelayne
13 years ago
We built a shallow broom/cleaning supplies cabinet. It sits on our stairwell landing leading to the basement. I absolutely love it. We have it fixed to the wall, so that we can move it, if necessary, to get big appliances or other overly large items down the stairwell. The dimensions are 30"X 80" X 7" deep. The photos make the area look a lot smaller than it is. We can easily bring large items up and down, without hitting the cabinet.

You mentioned the stairwell, and I thought of our solution. Perhaps it will help you.
gillylily
Original Author
13 years ago
Shelayne-
That is a great idea. Do you have to go down a few stairs to get it? WE have 3 steps before our landing which would work just fine for us. Thank you so much for showing that to me. Did you build that or did someone build it for you? We are definitely not handy, but I wonder if Ikea makes something similar to this..
shelayne
13 years ago
gillylilly,

Yes, we have to walk down 3 steps. These ARE IKEA cabinets, too! We just took two 15X80X12" shallow pantries and cut them to 7" depth. We used a custom door company for our doors, but that wouldn't matter anyway, as if you wanted to use IKEA doors, they would obviously work. Then we trimmed out the sides with beadboard and trim, and crown on the top to match our other cabinets.

We also took the 15" wide shelves for this pantry and cut them to fit the cabinets. The shelves come in packs of two. As you can see, we also used pegboard for the back, as I wanted to use some of those hanging gizmos. If we had permanently affixed it to the wall, I would have installed one of those broom/mop holder thingies. As it is, it perfectly fits my broom and Swiffer, with room to spare.

I hope this helps! :^)
jeri
13 years ago
It sounds like ShelayneÂs idea may work well for you but I wanted to present another option. Have you seen the 4" pull-outs several folks have made? We are planning on a 6" pullout for a bit more space.
gillylily
Original Author
13 years ago
Shelayne- That is perfect!! So helpful! Thank you for sharing with me. I think that will be our solution!!

Jeri-
I would have loved to do a pull-out but there is no place in our kitchen or surrounding areas we could put it.

Thanks again to everyone for responding!!!
shelayne
13 years ago
Oh, Lily, I am so glad I could help! Let me know if you have any questions! :^)

Please help me find a place for my utilities..

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