We have a lot of spices and seasonings in our kitchen. In fact, we have them in the small narrow cupboard beside the stove as well as two drawers. They are a complete mess with doubles of some bottles and extra packages for filling up old containers. I really have only ever had one spice rack set. I used to have one of those spinning racks that hold the serving spoons in a large canister in the center. I trashed that years ago as I hated the clutter on my counter. Although we have the cupboard and drawer space for all of these spices and seasonings, the mess means that the space can’t be used for other things I would like to store more effectively. So, my book display rack upcycle has kind of taken on a life of its own. As I worked on it, my mind was literally flooded with ideas on how to make my kitchen space work better for our family. I have a feeling this will be a bit of a journey as many of the projects I have in mind will take some time to build or reconfigure, but I’ll just add them to my already lengthy list of “to do’s”. Here are some before shots of my “spice space” ~ Yikes! How embarrassing!
Spice Bottle Upcycle:
The first thing I did was remove all of the tops off of my old rotating spice racks set of bottles. I got this rack about 20 years ago and you can see how some of the tops have yellowed over the years. Besides that, there are literally spices/seasonings in those bottles that have never been touched, so part of this overhaul involved tossing the contents of those bottles that never get used. In fact, two of the bottles still had the original seal under the lid! Once I did this, I was able to free up about 4 bottles and add spices that we use on a regular basis. The original set of spices had clear labels on them. I left the labels on those spices that remained the same, but peeled them off of those I was changing. I used “Goof Off” to remove the stubborn adhesive from under the sticky label. I then washed and dried the tops throughly and spray painted the tops. I used chalkboard paint, but regular flat black spray paint would work just as well for this project. I then began to top up the existing bottles if I had packages on hand and filled the empty bottles up with spices we use on a regular basis. The final step was labelling each lid. I did this free hand and without much thought or plan for design. I basically tried to print evenly and neatly. I wanted a “chalk” look without the hassle of smudging every time you open a bottle. The solution was using a white Crayola Twistable for the printing. This really helped to give the bottles new life and tidy-up this big mess. The bottles inside the drawer are still a mish-mash of sizes and shapes, but there are no duplicates and they are arranged in alphabetical order. This is a big improvement, but I have a new plan that will make this even better.
When I upcycled the book display rack, the height of the cabinet was over a foot shorter than the fridge. I would have loved for it to align perfectly, but that was not the case. I have decided to make a pull-out spice rack in the “dead” space above the cabinet. I think I can use drawer sliders, so that it can slide in and out easily. I can also make the rack much narrower than the bottom piece so that it fits all or most of the way back and closer to the wall. If I do this, I think I can actually fit all of my spice bottles in one spot! Wouldn’t that be nice? I am not sure when I will get to this, but hopefully when I sit down and actually figure it out, it won’t be too much work and I can get on it right away. We’ll see.
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Here’s a picture of the original book rack. Each panel is about 4″ deep and 2 feet wide, but I only have two of the original four panels. Lucky for me, one panel fits almost perfectly in the space between my fridge and the wall. I say almost because the bank of cupboards that sit over the fridge have pieces of wood that extend down to the floor on either side of the fridge (they look like supports, but are perhaps there to give it more of a finished look than actually serve a purpose). The result is that the 2 foot width will not fit. In order to use the rack, I had to cut it down to 16″. At first, I was really ticked about this and although I am still not happy about the extra work and lost storage space, I did manage to figure out a little something that made it a little less disappointing. I will share this in the final reveal as well, as I haven’t got it all figured out yet.
