Hardware Bins

We started out this morning with housecleaning - I did the upstairs bathroom while Ron and Robin started the living room, then I came down and attacked the disaster at "my" end of the couch. Which meant sending a bunch of stuff that had slowly oozed into the living room back out to the dining room.

Erk. At that point the dining room was a disaster.

Looking in my wallet for something else, I realized that I had a Menard's rebate certificate worth about half of the tool chest I'd been looking at, which Ron said was a sign, so off we went.

When we got there, Ron arm-twisted me into getting two.

After lunch and some grocery shopping, we got home, and Ron did most of the work packing up all the books (which were two deep) on one of the shelves. Then he brought the tool chests in, and we discovered a problem - they didn't quite fit if the point was to be able to open the drawers more than an inch or two (the rack of glass for lampworking being the obstruction). We debated and juggled things, and finally ended up with a re-arrangement of the upper two shelves that would work.

At which point Ron discovered that the lock was broken on one. The key turned, but it never unlocked.

I didn't mention that the final configuration resulted in the upper shelf resting on the tool chests - the shelves are/were supported by concrete half-blocks. By removing the blocks on the end away from the glass rack we gained enough space to open the drawers on the chest near the rack.

Fortuately, Ron was able to sneak the broken bin out without having to move everything again, and back to Menard's we went. Exchanged the chest, and picked up drawer liners.

Back home, shelves re-assembled and loaded, and I started putting the liners in.

You'd think that if the chests are 17" deep overall, and the liner material is 16" wide, the drawers would likely be 16" deep. Wrong. 15". Fortunately, the material cuts nicely with a rotary cutter, so it was only mildly annoying.

I'm glad Ron had me get two chests, by the time I'd put away, with yet more help from Ron, the frequently-used hardware that was in the dining room, most of the drawers were full. I've got some stuff in the drawers that can be evicted, and a bit of space still, but one wouldn't have been enough.

Pictures below. The red Craftsman 4-drawer units don't seem to be available any more, which is kind of annoying, as they're all shallow drawers; I wasn't sure I wanted any deeper ones. The new units are the black 3-drawer ones above the red ones. I can see into the top drawers, but I wouldn't want them up any higher. The bottom drawers on the new units are deeper, which is actually ok for some things.

The stuff on the left edge of the pictures is the rack of glass for lampworking. I did have to take one long glass rod out of the rack to get clearance for the drawers. In front of the shelves is the Workmate where the anvil-shaped-object lives. The pictures were taken from the big sewing machine, the shelves are next to the doorway to the kitchen.