New Water Pump Access Panel

The entrance stairwell is no longer an embarrassment! My mother cut a new access panel for the water pump/rear of the stairwell:

She cut the top of the board on a bevel to make the edge less catching. Notice the two little pulls for removing the panel. I gave the board several coats of dark brown spray paint today.

The board is held in place by two roller catches:

A visual check of the fresh water tank is the easiest way to monitor levels, so an easy access panel was important to me. This fits the bill!

New Shelving

I recently did a huge book purge and eliminated all but my cookbooks from the three driver’s side overhead compartments in the front room. I was tired of having my kitchen stuff squeezed into a few cabinets, making it a hassle to grab a mixing bowl or the rice cooker.

I left the cabinet fairly bare but slowly started to migrate things over there. One of the compartment doors was open the other day and looking at it from a fresh perspective, I was hit with a realisation: a shelf could double my storage space in that cabinet!

The cabinet is about 75″ long and 13″ deep. My mother has had some boards in her garage for over 10 years; they were part of a shelving unit she had made me for my second apartment. The wardrobe project will require six boards and there were eight. The two remain boards offered a total length of 72″ and a depth of 12″. Close enough!!!

I grabbed a bunch of brackets and screws from my hardware bin, a paint can to use as a shelf holder, and a screw driver. Less than an hour later, the new shelving was in.

It turns out well that the shelves are a bit short length-wise; I have just enough space at the end to stand up all my cookbooks.

Now, it was time to start filling the shelves and, of course, containerize the contents:

The huge corner cabinet in the kitchen now feels a lot more open:

I have a lot less stuff than I did when I moved into Miranda and it’s nice to be able to start spreading it around more thinly. I’m sure I’ll find more things to store in those compartments as time goes on, but what a great feeling it is to create additional storage and not immediately fill it up!