Side Projects

Coat Rack

One of the small additions I made to our PDX house was a simple wall mounted coat rack for coats and keys. When my fiance (now wife) moved in, I expanded it to handle both of our coats. It's nothing more than a 1x4 with some simple hooks screwed into it, but it served our needs well.

In the new home, there isn't a place to hang coats or take off your shoes near the back door, or front door for that matter. I made a slightly more ornate version of my simple coat rack to match the trim in the house.

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Baking Tray Drawer

One of my complaints with the new house is that he kitchen cabinetry hasn't held up over the years. This is partly due to the initial quality of the components and general wear and tear. In particular, the cabinet hinges are blum partial overlay hinges that no longer stay closed, and make a snapping sound when opened. This seems like a common complaint with these compact Blum hinges and it doesn't seem like they've improved things since. Because they don't stay closed, I've noticed that when you walk in the kitchen, the cabinet doors rattle enough to make me look around to find what is about to break.

I identified the worst offender (it had double sided tape holding it closed...) as a narrow baking tray drawer in the island. It was covered in grease on the inside from dirty baking trays and I wasn't thrilled about putting my baking equipment in a pre-dirtied cabinet. In our old house, the baking tray cabinet would always jam when the trays would nest inside each other and it'd be impossible to get out of the cabinet. I've always wanted to try out a vertical pull out drawer and I decided to take this opportunity to have one.