Gas Meter Cabinet & Wine Rack is Complete!

One more to-do item on our basement list has officially been crossed off! We finished the cabinet and wine rack hiding our gas meter a couple weeks ago and are loving it. Tim would like me to paint something to hang up, so I’m thinking about it and looking at inspiration. We went to our local grocery store and picked up 12 bottles of wine to help fill it. They have a deal that if you buy six bottles, you get an additional 10% off the lowest price for each bottle. While we were checking out, the cashier told us to buy six-pack bottles of wine on Wednesdays because you get 15% off that day. Oh heck yes.

After getting the trim installed on the top and bottom, we filled in the holes and gave the trim a fresh coat of paint. Which actually led to me giving the rest of the baseboards in the basement a fresh coat of paint. Painting baseboards is starting to haunt me in my sleep.

Anyway, we’ve filled the drawer with coozies, along with coasters and wine stoppers. Super handy for when we have guests and keeping those things in one place.

Walking down the stairs and seeing the back half of this room with the finished cabinet makes me so happy. It looks pretty bare from this angle, but there are prints framed and hung on the opposite wall that’s not in the picture. Down the road a bar and stools will be added. It’s actually worked out not having a bar yet because we’ve had to put a couple long tables together for large gatherings, and we’ve needed all of that space.

The opposite view of the room doesn’t look any more decorated, but it will be someday! Also, can you spot Tim’s head? He’s sitting on the sectional watching the game on TV.

Other than the bar, the only projects left are the door under the stairs and one little thing with the basement landing and the hand rail.

—m.

Gas Meter Cabinet & Wine Rack Pt. 3

So the last time I did an update on this project, our cabinet looked like this…

After we dry-fitted the wine rack, it was removed so we could add a “floor” for the rack to sit on, add smaller pieces of wood to help finish framing in the sides, and then we painted the inside black. Oh, and we added a black, breathable cloth to the back. The picture below just looks like a black hole, but that’s what it looked like after all of that.

This is a slightly better picture with the shelving back inside the cabinet. The shelving is now sitting on the floor of the cabinet. The small diagonal wood pieces got added as an extra support at the bottom for once there’s bottles pressing down on the angled pieces of wood. Those also got painted to blend in.

Tim’s dad worked on making the drawer, though I don’t think I ever saw it in progress. I came home after a long day of work and the drawer had been installed and the front piece had been put on. The nail holes had already been filled in, too. I was okay with all of that.

We (as in Tim) attached the front piece to the drawer, painted, and then headed to Home Depot to pick out handles for the drawer. Because it’s a fairly long drawer, I wanted two handles and they had to be darker to go with the inside of the wine rack. I couldn’t find the exact ones we got online, but they’re similar to these.

The bottom trim as been installed, and the top would have been too except the wrong style was purchased…so that has to go back. We have a couple trips coming up, so top trim and paint touch-ups will probably (sadly) be put on hold until after those.  Oh, we did figure out that we could fit at least 10 bottles of wine in the three largest cubbies, though we probably won’t. We’ve already started using the drawer by moving coozies and various bar utensils into it. It’s so handy!

—m.

Gas Meter Cabinet & Wine Rack Pt. 2

So if all goes according to plan, the cabinet and wine rack being built to hide the gas meter should be ready for paint this weekend! (Insert 1,000 more exclamation points here).

We (as in Tim and his dad) took a break from working on it through the holidays, but are back at it. The shelf was securely attached and the top half of the cabinet was finished being framed out.

We actually decided to nix the doors on the top half and do a single piece of wood to hide the meter. It allows us to hang a piece of art on it in hopes of trying to district from the cabinet. The single board is screwed into the frame with four screws, which I’m not a huge fan of and am trying to think of a way to hide them. We can’t put trim over them in the off chance of us ever having to access the meter and needing to take the board off. We all know the chances of this happening are slim, but it has to be considered. I’m hoping that once the cabinet is painted and something is hung up, the screws won’t be as noticeable.

For the wine rack portion, we’re using this as an inspiration. I like the contrast between the neutral wall color and the dark brown rack. We used birch boards which were cut to allow them to interlock with each other. From there, the wood was stained to match the shelf. Since the edges are going to be the most noticeable, we painted those a dark brown/black. We’re going to be using a dark colored breathable material in the back since this is on an outside wall. It’s similar to what you would find velcro-ed to the bottom of upholstered furniture. I was concerned that if the wood boards were painted white they would get scuffed up from the bottles and look dirty or dingy because of that material in the back. I also wanted larger cubbies so several bottles could be placed in each, so the design was based off 10 inch square cubbies.

The rack was set inside the space to be dry fitted so we can adjust everything before securing it in there for good. There’s going to be a drawer above the rack, so there’s some extra spacing there. The inside needs to be painted dark to match the rack.

Once everything is installed and painted, we have to trim up the top and bottom to match the other cabinet and the support beam. I can’t wait to get this filled with wine!

—m.

2014 Home Goals

I made a list over last weekend of house projects I reeeeaaally want to get done this year. Some have been dragged out for far too long (like the basement) and then there are the ones we’ve been saying we need to do since the first year of living at the house. Last weekend I must have had a fire lit under me because I already started on one of the projects—repainting the baseboards. So here’s what I’m hoping gets done this year!

1. Basement: We are seriously on the home stretch with this one, you guys. However, I feel like I have been saying it for like…ever. The cabinet around the gas meter has started, and the door under the stairs needs to be started completely over. Someday there will be a dry bar down there, but in order for the basement to be completed in my mind, the gas meter cabinet and door under the stairs are what’s left.

2. Baseboards: One of my goals this year is to get the baseboards on the entire first floor repainted. They have yellow stains on them from when our hardwood floors were refinished before moving into the house almost four years ago. The guest room’s were done when I repainted and the bathroom doesn’t have any, but everywhere else needs to be touched up. Last weekend I was able to get the baseboards in the hallway, kitchen and dining room done. The living room and office will be next, followed by our bedroom.

3. Quarter Round Molding: Tim has been wanting to do this since we moved into the house. It’s also a nice way to make the baseboards look finished. There’s a spot in the dining room where the wood floor’s planks don’t meet the baseboards evenly, so adding quarter round would help hide that. But in order to install the quarter round, the baseboards need to be repainted and ready to go. I’m not sure if I’ll end up painting the quarter round white to match the baseboards or leave them wood to match the floors. I think I’m leaning towards white.

4. Landscaping: I seriously think this has been on our to-do list the last two summers, but hopefully we can get to it this year. The wooden railroad ties in the front yard are rotted and need to go. We’re hoping to do a stone wall (similar to this) or edging (like this) to replace the wood ties. It just depends on what we do with the bushes—keep them, replace them, add other plants. We also have to factor in that our yard slopes down a bit.

There are a few other smaller projects I want to do this year like putting the finishing touches on the office (still waiting on my chair to come back from being reupholstered) and repaint our bedroom, but those won’t take quite the effort.

—m.

Gas Meter Cabinet & Wine Rack Pt. 1

Project “build a cabinet to hide our gas meter” has finally started. The cabinet to hide the water meter was done last spring, and now it’s time to get the other cabinet done. As of right now, the plan is to divide the column in half—the top would be a cabinet with two doors that would give us access to the gas meter, and the bottom half would house a wine rack.

The process to building the walls of the cabinet are basically the same as the water meter cabinet—sanded pine boards cut and attached to the studs on either side of the cabinet. We will have to fill in the gab where the two walls meet, and then it will eventually be painted to match the rest of the basement. In the two pictures below, the sides hadn’t been attached to the studs yet, but now that they, are the gap isn’t as big.

After we had the two sides put up, we measured for a shelf. Since the bottom half will hold wine, we thought it’d be good to have a shelf for us to set bottles on to open.

While the shelf was being cut and stained, framing to the bottom half was added. We want the cubby holes for the wine to be a diamond shape and hold at least 4 bottles each. We’re even considering adding a stemware rack under the shelf to hold wine glasses since the space is so large. Now we love our wine, but we’d have to buy quite a bit to fill that space!

So here’s where we are today…framing started with the shelf done! The next step is to build the front side of the cabinet so we can start thinking about doors.

—m.