Spice Rack with Tambour Door...

Art Mulder

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London, Ontario
As some of you know, I write the occasional article for Canadian Home Workshop magazine. That's fun, and brings in a bit of tool-buying change. But the downside is that you need to send in your project for photographing, which means you can't actually use it for a while!

My wife wanted this new spice rack. Wanted it bad. Our kitchen, like all of them, I'm beginning to think, is too small and doesn't have enough storage space. So we wanted a spice rack to get the spice jars out of the cupboard.

I came up with this design, using a tambour door kit from Lee Valley. Seemed to work pretty good... but then I had to drop it off at the magazine for them to pose and photograph and all that fun stuff. Which meant we had to wait another month before we could actually use it.

Ah well, it's in happy use now, and the issue has even hit my mailbox, so here are some photos and notes. (I think it's only polite to wait until the issue is out there before posting anything in public.)

I find sketchup to be more and more useful. In particular, I used it to find a 'sample' kitchen online in the 3d warehouse (even looked nicer than my kitchen) and place the project right there to see how it looked.
spice-garage2-in-kitchen-close.jpg

It looked good, so I got busy. It was a bit fiddly, working with the tambour. For one thing, you absolutely must apply finish before you assemble it. I don't think I could have applied finish to the tambour otherwise!
finished-open.jpg

It's about 20" wide, and fills the space between the counter and the upper cabinet. This is enough for two tall shelves, and one shorter shelf, to hold our spices. The reason for the shorter shelf is the space used by the tambour.
installed-halfopen.jpg

...art
 
Now that is a great idea Art. We were just talking about the spice rack on my MIL's counter and about it being an eye sore. I'll have to show her yours...Thanks :thumb:
 
Great job, Art, and congrats on the ink. I was just getting ready to ask you why it had the notch in the back, but the last pic explains it all.
 
nice job on the flat wrk art and the article as well..wont be long now and yu can quit your day job:) and just get the big bucks for writing about your other interests.
 
Congratulations Art both on the publishing as well as the spice rack. Will have to hide that from LOML cause we have exactly the same issue.:thumb:

My only concern is locating it so close to the stove, wont it a ton of splatter from cooking and gum up the tambor door?
 
nice job on the flat wrk art and the article as well..wont be long now and yu can quit your day job:) and just get the big bucks for writing about your other interests.

Thanks, Larry, but ... :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

I concluded long ago that laughter is the only response when people comment about the 'big bucks' I get from writing. (I know you were just kidding!)

Here, for anyone else out there, I dug up the writing guide for Fine Woodworking as an example. Scroll down to the payment section, and think about how many articles you'd need to write to make anything close to your day job pay. :(

Oh it's a fun dream, and don't misunderstand me, I love the writing, and it is still a rush every time an issue shows up with an article. But it is NOT a living by itself. I think many people, in FWW specifically, use this as a form of PR for their main job (be that teaching, custom woodworking, or whatnot).


Congratulations Art both on the publishing as well as the spice rack. Will have to hide that from LOML cause we have exactly the same issue.:thumb:

My only concern is locating it so close to the stove, wont it a ton of splatter from cooking and gum up the tambor door?

Rob, would you rather she found the article on the heirloom Cherry cupboard, or the article on retiling your counter backsplash? Cause I think my project is easier... ;)

As for the splatter... we'll just have to wait and see. You do want this reasonably close to the stove, after all, since that is where we use the spices. And the other end of the counter would obstruct an outlet. We could slide it over 4-6 inches I suppose, but I like the looks of it here, so far.

thanks for the kind words,
...art
 
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