Appliance Garage for Kitchen

IDEAS for APPLIANCE GARAGE for your KITCHEN

If you have lots of little appliances cluttering your countertops:

• food processor
• coffeemaker
• stand mixer
• toaster

and would like to keep them out of sight, the solution is an

Appliance Garage

In my case I wanted to fit it under a corner wall cabinet, as that is a portion of the countertop that's difficult to use during prep. 

I hadn't realized how difficult an undertaking that could be, especially if the clearance between countertop and bottom of wall cabinet is shallow (mine is 16 3/4"). Here are some options to consider.

Hinged sides and doors.

Not acceptable because monopolizes too much counter area during opening

Flipper door (right) and pocket door (left)	The flipper would not work because it eats height under wall cabinet. The pocket door (½ on either side) would be great with a corner cabinet, as the side rails don’t need to be perpendicular to cabinet front! Slides: 2 sets = $78 incl ship
Vertical lift door	would only work on unit with sides perpendicular to front (not corner unit). Swing-out door  below: same, although can maybe place posts left & right of opening to accommodate scissor hinges.
Ready-made appliance garage Attractive affordable solution ($115 in solid red oak) however it eats height because of rollup roller at top	Curtains.  Why not? Here’s the hardware

Pass-through garage door

Problem

We wanted to place the garbage cans in the driveway rather than in the back yard – but the path from the kitchen to the driveway to throw out the garbage goes through the garage. We were afraid that operating the garage door much more often, each time we took out the garbage, would eat into its lifetime. So, how do you go through the door without opening it fully? A pass-through door within a door.

Solution

At first I was sure I could buy such a door-in-a-door without a problem, but that was not the case. First problem: all standard doors you can buy are taller than our one-piece garage door, so they would not fit. 

You can buy custom-made garage doors with built-in walk-throughs but they cost a fortune. Here's the principle (click to see a video):

So I made my own for about $50 in materials and a few hours of work, following these steps. Here's what my door looked like before I started – it is a one-piece door made out of 7" slats held together by 2x3's:

1. Draw the outline of the future door, making sure you leave a few inches on the bottom below the future opening. To protect the garage door's structural integrity, don't make the opening larger than necessary

2. Cut through the outline you just drew, leaving a couple of places on each of the 4 sides not cut for the time being – you will do the final cut later. You can use a rotary saw or, as I did, an oscillating multi-tool.

3. Place a frame made out of 2x3's inside the cut, and another one outside the cut. Screw these 2x3's into the slats that make up the garage door from the inside, using 2" screws.

4. Screw hinges between the outside (fixed) and the inside (mobile) 2x3s. On the side of the door opposite the hinges, screw a temporary strap between the future door and the fixed 2x3.

5. With all the hinges and the strap in place you can now go ahead and finish cutting completely the perimeter of the door opening without any worries. Remove the temporary strap and check the result. You may have to do some final sanding. Also to make sure the door stays well closed, install a ball catch in the bottom of door and sill.

Here's the final door, seen from the inside. Note that the vertical 2x3s of the Fixed Frame are also screwed, top and bottom, to the top and bottom plates of the garage door to prevent movement. I used a self-adjusting latch to finish the job.

Oh- by the way- surprise when the job was finished: the garage door motor would no longer lift the door!!! Sounds bad but fairly easy to fix. 

Turns out all this added 31 lbs to the door. So I replaced the springs with the next size up: Holmes Spring was model P728 and was ready to replace anyway; replaced it with P528.

Make your own Zafu (cushion for zazen meditation)

In 1975, as I was starting out with Zen meditation, my friend made me a Zafu, or cushion for sitting Zazen. She was an experienced seamstress, and so was able to interpret the partially erroneous instructions provided in Approach to Zen by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (p. 86). 
38 years later this cushion finally came apart, after many attempts at mending it, and I realized that I need to make another one. Since at best I am an amateur in sewing, I proceeded largely through trial and error. In the hope of simplifying the task for others, I am offering the following detailed instructions.

Finished product.

This Zafu is fairly large and plump, for a somewhat tall person weighing 195 lbs. – smaller people can scale down.

Dimensions and material

It is made from 2 circles 15½ in. diameter each, and a band 9½” wide, 100” long. This band is pleated so that 1½” of cloth is hidden for each 3” of band (see the 2 images). It is best to use cloth which is not smooth, such as black cotton duck or black corduroy, around 7-8 oz/sq.yd.

Band with Pleats

Pattern

Entire project can be made from a piece of cloth 54” wide by 3 ft. The two strips can be sewn end to end, with the seam hidden under one of the pleats.

a. Sew the two strips end-to-end to make a 95”-long strip.

b. Make the pleats (making sure to hide the seam mentioned above under a pleat) and baste this strip, as shown above.

c. Start by sewing inside-out. Sew the strip to one of the round pieces of cloth, leaving  a 3/8” margin on each cloth

d. Sew the opposite side of the strip to the other round piece. Your work should now look like this (there will be an open end which is not sewn): 

e. Take out the basting and turn the work inside-out.

f.  Stuff with kapok or polyester foam.

g.  Finish sewing by hand to close the Zafu : 

As the stuffing may become packed down from sitting on the Zafu, you should expect to open it after a while and add more stuffing. 

Music at the Sorbonne while Notre Dame cathedral was built

You will fairly soon be traveling to Paris, where you will undoubtedly revisit Notre Dame.  In order to put you in the mood, you may want to listen to this piece of music which was composed there by Pérotin  almost 1000 years ago. The manuscript on the left is also by him, in contemporary notation.

Pérotin was a French composer,  who was active in the 2nd half of the 12th century, just after Notre Dame cathedral started to be built. Presumably teaching at the Sorbonne, he composed the very earliest polyphonic music; the selection which you can play by clicking ► below, constitutes the earliest 4-part harmony ever composed in the world!

And, if you want to hum along, here is a modern transcription: