Clean Space

I had a whole day at home today, and after taking down and putting away all my Christmas decorations, I tackled an eyesore in my kitchen.  We have 2 phone lines here.  A British landline and a Vonage line that has a US number so our friends and family can call us.  Add in our BT Hub for internet and an ipod docking station, and you end up with a mess!  All the cords are atrocious!  My husband wanted me to find a shelf that we could put everything on and hide the cords underneath. I looked everywhere and couldn't find one.  I didn't want to make a shelf from scratch, so when my youngest daughter finally killed the cheapo shelf she was using as a dresser, I decided to get out the circular saw.  Man, I love to use power tools. My sister would probably roll her eyes about now and say something like, "Leave it to the boys," but I think it is fun.  So here is the space that was driving me crazy.

What a mess, huh?!

We bought these shelves from Lowes over 6 years ago. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Which is what we needed at time, since we weren't making a ton of money and had 2 kids! Over the years, I have had to add many screws to put the drawers back together or the sides.  When this one broke, I was done with it.  But instead of trashing it, I thought the top part had potential.

So I used the saw to cut off the sides and then reattached the bottom underneath the first drawer. This went fairly smoothly.  I had to rip off the back of the top drawer though to fit the cords in through the back.  In the end, I ended up with a nice clean space that stores it all. It may be a bit higher than I would have wanted, but it was definitely the cheapest and easiest solution. 

Voila! SO much cleaner!