Kitchen coat and shoe built-in

The space between our laundry room door (stained) and the backdoor (painted red temporarily) is to become a set of shoe storage shelves, a bank of drawers for coat and glove storage, and an open coat cubby with hooks to hang coats, sweaters, etc. We've constantly got coats all over the house and piles of shoes by each door. This built-in should serve a much needed purpose. In addition, the lower shoe shelf will also feature a small opening larger enough for the cats to access their litter box in the laundry room. This project is one on a long list necessary to finish our kitchen remodel.

To construct the cabinet, we used mostly vertical grain fir that's was salvaged from an old school cabinet (minus the drawers which are face grain. We're using drawers salvaged from another piece of furniture. The cabinet is made up of two pieces - the first being the base with the shoe selves and drawers, and second is the upper coat storage cubby.

All of the salvaged lumber has been sanded of it's original finish and cut to size. Next up so to start staining so that the cabinet can be put together.

Check back here for updated photos as the projects progresses.

Front Fence

Sometime during the month of October we mostly finished the craftsman style fence along the front of our property. This fence has been in the plans for awhile, and we actually nailed the panels together for the project last winter. Since then, the panels had been sitting in the wood shop taking up valuable space so we decided it was time to put it all together.

The fence is complimentary to the fence we built last year that runs alongside our property line. We decided to go with a vertical panel arranged in a wide-skinny-skinny fashion to compliment the siding on our house. We went with a shorter four feet front fence since we wanted it to add structural value, but not be overbearing. In other words, we're trying to avoid the compound effect.

So why the fence? In our area, it is normal to let your dogs run wild. Most of the dogs end up in our yard (since we don't have a large dog to chase them off) and leave behind not-so-nice prizes. So, we decided to build a privacy fence to keep out the dogs, and to add some architectural appeal to the front of our property. As you can see from the pictures, the front of our property is lined with two grand evergreen trees which hide the house and it's detail from the street. The fence adds some needed architectural detail, and exudes our craftsman home theme.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home

The fence features an opening for a walk through gate, and a gate across the driveway. I have yet to build them, but hopefully I'll have time to get to that project this winter. Eventually, the plan is to build a brick sidewalk that runs across the front yard and connects the front door with the walk-through gate. Will be a nice addition when it's all done.

We left the posts tall, and are trying to determine if we want to add a horizontal trellis across the front, or other structural details. I have all winter to stare out the window and contemplate the direction to take this project.

From The Making of a Craftsman Home