Sunday, September 16, 2012

Hanging a Cutting Board (on the fly)

One of the gems I found in my mum's storage shed was the cutting board I made her way back when I was 7th grade. She is the one I owe thanks to for my love of chickens in the kitchen, and bestowed my gift back to me now that I have a big ol' kitchen of my own. The only thing was I had no cabinets with space on top, like she did, or free counter space to display my chicken-themed, wood shaping prowess. The last thing I wanted to do was drill a gaping hole (say, where the eye should be) to hang it off a nail by a thread. It would just look wrong; it would ruin the cutting board. And god knows I'm not really willing to part with my money (probably $15 worth given my experience with prices on domestic stuff) on a cutting board hanging apparatus at one of the expensive kitchen/box stores.

In one of the boxes of things that should have gone to the trash, but somehow ended up getting moved over, I found our former gold-colored curtain rod hooks. They are useless now because the windows in the house already came equipped with hooks (in old metal-covered in white paint color) in addition to the fact that I only had 3 of the 4 hooks that originally came with the rods. Frequent loss of some, but not all, matching things is a given occurrence during moves with bonus points if they are irreplaceable without buying a whole new set, too. The final hook will probably show up as we're moving again in a box we previously checked 15 times or more.

Seeing that it could no longer serve its original purpose, I was about to toss it out when I realized that they could indeed hold something. A cutting board perhaps? Yes! Bear pointed out that if I flipped over the hook so that the opening faced down, there was a nice flat part for the cutting board to rest on. It was then that I wondered if we could bend the opening completely closed for a 2-in-1 deal: combination cutting board wall display and oven mitt hangers.


The gist is, you take those old curtains hooks and bend the u-shaped part closed with a strong enough tool.

Before the squeeze.

After the squeeze. It would be useful to insert the bent napkin rings just before you get it closed all the way. We did not have that solution figured out by then.

Get a ruler, level it, and mark on the wall where you'd like to put the hooks. Then drill the screws in a bit, put the hooks on, and finish drilling in to the point where it's snug, but not too tight. Oh, and make sure to measure how far apart you'd like them (so you don't put them too far apart or too close together).
Make sure it's level! Ours is just a tad off, but we're not too worried about it.

Yay! Up on the wall to proudly display my chicken-rendering abilities!

Mum brought up some bargain napkin holders. Two of them (out of the twelve total) were a little bent anyway so I thought they'd make great hangers. I simply  bent the ring upwards to hang (inside will work better if you've planned this out ahead of time, unlike me) and then pulled one of the "vines" out to make a hook that could hang the oven mitts. This will probably only work with napkin ring holders that are made of cheaper aluminum and have a lot of give. Anything else will either be impossible or snap on you, making you upset and the hanger useless.


Less effort for me means a happy Rabbit, indeed!

All done! I can finally rest easy knowing I have a place for my mitts.


From the porch-front: shelves are still in progress and very frustrating for Bear. Though things are moving along slowly, they are moving along! Keep checking in...I think when I find the hardware I'll post my pattern and tutorial for a clothespin bag!

-R

1 comment:

  1. Alex that is too cute! Love it..and glad you found a use for all!

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