Step Up

one of the items on my list of Must-Have's was a step ladder that i could store IN the pantry so we could get to our IKEA Hacked pullouts at the top of the pantry & fridge.  both of us are only 5'5" & we cannot ask Tucker to come over every time we need the pizelle maker.  

4 of 5:  Handy Step Storage

so a LOOOOONG time ago, i found this ladder at The Container Store

but was too stubborn to buy it.  i was certain i could find something (1) local & (b) cheaper with my focus being on the former.  i also made the mistake of only concentrating on how flat the ladder could fold up & if it was shallow enough to still slide into the bottom of the pantry.  i never really focused on the height it would give me (or lack thereof) when unfolded.  so with that misguided priority in mind, i ended up buying a single step step stool from Target.

not a bad little step, but really what was i thinking?  one step?  i might as well stand on my tippies!

so i finally did an online chat with a CS rep & explained my delima & she graciously agreed to get someone to measure this thing folded up.  "it cannot exceed 23" front-2-back when collapsed or the pantry door won't shut & this MUST be stored in the kitchen or we will continue to stand on my refurb'd stools" i told her - that poor poor woman!  it came in at....drum roll.....dramatic pause.......i don't remember, but it was less than 24" hooray!  so of course i ordered right then & there...........NO!
i don't know why, i just didn't.  wait, i think i mentioned something about being indecisive?  yeah, that would be it.  so FIIINALLY i got my crap together & ordered it!  but not before online chatting 1 more time to make sure i'd made it absolutely clear that this thing HAD to be 23" or less when folded.  dear dog!  someone help me!  yet another CS rep chatted with me online & assured me he understood my question & it was definitely whatever measurement i didn't remember yet again - i have a feeling i'm flagged at their Call Center now.  so all that for this!

and i love it!  these upper cabinets by far are still one of my favorites HACKS in the remodel, second only to my wine storage.  and how did the ladder do when collapsed?  

perfect!  do we use it often?  sparingly, but the whole point of the top cabinets is for seasonal/lesser used items that had to stay - unlike the mounds of crap that never made it back into the kitchen!  but when i do want to get to it, it's not a hassel & i'm not digging stuff out.  
the only complaint i would say about this ladder is it's not easy to collapse back down.  i saw that in the comments section before i bought it & it does take me a few seconds to get it right, but it's worth it not to have to lug a step ladder through the house, watch Nacho stand on the counters, or risk some horrendous Darwinian episode from standing on those bar stools.

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Wave of the Future

sorry for the drought, but we were on vaca & i never seem to get back into the groove quickly. so another IKEA Hack brings us my next kitchen customization!

3 of 5: Microwave & Cutting Board Station

one of the early ideas i found when researching the kitchen redo was to place the microwave under the counter. most of the examples i saw had it positioned in the island.  i have always hated any appliance that sits on the counter (with the possible exception of a Kitchen Aid Mixer cuz they are so stylish right?).  of course, appliances on the counter take a way distant 2nd to the microwave above the stove.  uggh!  yuck! grosse!  we lived with that beast for almost 10 years ourselves

yeah, sexy right?  and yes that is a missing drawer front to the left of the stove. believe it or not it was the drawer front that broke the kitchen's back & kicked our redo into gear! sure glad i tore that off...uh, i mean too bad it fell off!
anywhose...the great thing about that microwave was, NOTHING!  there was nothing great about it. the lighting was terrible and the venting went straight out the top and into the kitchen.  i love when people do that, not properly venting a stove!  right up there with eating their toe nails that one!
so i knew 6 years ago that the microwave was not going back UP into or onto anything. it would be hidden out of the way.  and here we have it!

we started out with the Akurum Base With 3 Drawers (18" wide i believe) in Nexus Black/Brown

Akurum Base w/ 3 Drawers

oddly enough when i went to their US site today, i could not choose the Nexus Black/Brown option so that might now be discontinued.
moving on....the only drawer kit we bought was the bottom one.  leaving the rest open, we simply used a piece of shelving, cut a piece of Black/Brown wall panel to size for the front, & attached the front panel to the shelf with the hinges to create this - some of these pieces you can't find online, so be sure to ask for extra shelving and panel pieces for custom stuff like this, you'll be glad you did.

put the shelf in the cabinet & slide the microwave in.  to compensate for the extra depth, we just cut a scrap piece of OSB down to the correct width & dept & set it in the back so the microwave would not slide around.

now we were ready to dress it up.  either we own a biscuit cutter or we borrowed one. i have no idea which, but Nacho cut slices in the cabinet frame & the panel pieces that would cover the white.

he then wood glued/snapped those pieces together to give it a finished look.

and here's what it looks like in use

we have since changed the panel to pull down instead of flip up.  it's a toss up really, but bending over to see what i needed to grab was cumbersome so we are using the flip down for now. and since it's so narrow, it makes for a great place to store cutting boards.  i corralled that with a hand tray from Target.

nicely done i think!  and here is a more complete finished view

yes, i know you can still see the white inside of the cabinet, but i just can't bring myself to line that with anything just yet.  perhaps a future project.  thinking either cork or metal panel.....but we will call it finished for now.

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Punch List

oh my dog! some times you just have those weekends where, for no explanable reason, you get lots of stuff done! i don't know what happened to us this past weekend, but, whatever it was, i liked it! i always have my list of things to get accomplished written out for Fridays and i never get any of it done.  this last Friday was no exception.  instead of working on an endless ToNotDo list, i took Baxter over to my co-worker's house for some socializing work.  after we got back home, i had no motivation to do anything that i'd put on my list during the week.
however, for some strange reason, Saturday was a different story.  Nacho & i did our usual Sat morning breakfast at the Greece & when we got home, boy did we hit the ground running.  for me it was a deep cleaning Saturday.  we get a LOT of those wispy cob webs around here & i'd ignored them long enough. so my intention was to vacuum everything above eye level.  i did just that, but then it somehow led to more.  so here's just some of what we accomplished.....

Venting

Nacho proved me wrong for once!  he got this finished up in about 2 weeks

yes, we now vent to the outside!  horray!  so technically, the kitchen/dining remodel is complete!  i will post a full before/after soon!  this sets us up for the roof redo that we've been needing for some time. can't wait!

Wine Storage

i'd originally posted the bulk of this project here, but it was nowhere near complete at the time.  the steps have long been painted but i never did line the bottom drawers & get everything set up for storage.  check that off the list as well.

this is still by far one of my favorite items in the remodel.  and yes all of that is wine we drink with the exception of 1 empty bottle that is a placeholder!  i did add the verticle corks at the back of each bottle to prevent the bottles from sliding back & so far it's worked great!  the bottom drawers actually have room for 2 rows of wine & each drawer has room in the very back for 1-2 empty bottles.  i plan to keep those handy for that placeholder function so that bottles don't roll around when there is an empty slot.  and yes, Graffina is my current favorite right now - i have 3 different years of it. yum-o!  oh, and if anyone can find me a consistent supply of The Show Cab, i'd greatly appreciate it!

Sealed

okay, this i actually did Friday morning, but i'd been on Nacho to apply a layer of Tung oil to the bamboo counter tops.  why i didn't just do it myself to begin with, i'll never know.  but that's done now as well!

Trim

oh god how we hate HATE hate painting trim around here.  let's see with the kitchen/dining remodel, we had 10 windows to trim out & Nacho did 1. wonder who did THE OTHER FRACKING 9??? oh yeah, that would be me!  i am a saddist!

but it's done finally!  i did also manage to take some time to put 1 more coat of gloss on our bedroom window.  the photos above are the spare bedroom/office & they were dying for some attention.  anyone notice the lovely screen patch in the first photo (check out the right screen).  yeah, that's sticky Cling Wrap that's been taped to the screen on both sides using packing tape.  we can thank Baxter for that nice little remodel.  he wasn't getting enough of a breeze through his hair so he made a minor modification.  well, until we get it fixed.....  i must say, as much as i loathe painting trim, i do love how it looks when you're done.  i spent tonight putting all the hardware back on.  note to self/everyone:  it really is worth your time to remove all that hardware & don't bother taping the windows off, just come back with a razor blade after.  both those tips are such time savers!

Return of the Tarp Curtain

so i did finally get my sewing machine back a couple of weeks ago. and remember whe i modified that existing curtain to add a liner to it for use in the bedroom?  guess what?  i don't like it and i've changed my mind.  i know, simply shocking.  but i never did get rid of the old Tarp curtain!  you know what?  it's rough, but i really do like it!  so since the office/spare bedroom didn't have a good blackout curtain, just an old sheer from Pier1 way back when, i put Tarp curtain back up in here.

for some reason, i still like this curtain best. i like it so much, i'm changing my color scheme when we redo this room so i can keep this curtain. crazy i know!  i think the true test will be if Moser can sleep in here without the street light peaking through!

A Little Extra

and with the old Pier1 sheer i had in the office coming down to make way for the Tarp curtain, i had a tension rod with nothing to do.  so i borrowed from a popular Pinterest idea & repurposed that in our laundry room.

i'm going to revamp that room some day too so you will have an idea of just how small that space is.  it is my ultimate homage to organization and/or use of every square inch humanly possible!
actually this is not all we got accomplished.  we had a couple of other small items that made a big difference (or not):

• Nacho pulled the dining slider door & cleaned out the track. i do wish i'd gotten a picture of this. the door was so bad that i often had to put all my weight into it just to get it to open the entire way.  he said it was amazing the amount of sand that had accumulated in the track.  i think in the 11 years we've lived here we might have cleaned that thing once.  that is on my annual ToNotDo list now!
• i attempted to organize some speaker wire behind the couch.  why i have no idea, it will never be seen.  suffice it to say, those Command strips that seem like such a great idea on tv, not so much in my house. fell right off the wall.  i ended up using the plastic nail thingies that electricians use when running wiring to fasten the wire to a floating shelf so i could at least get them off the ground. certainly not photo worthy.

so, not exactly earth shattering, change the way i live stuff, but certainly changed the way i feel.  anyone else getting things off their punch list these days!

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My Favorite IKEA Hack!

late as usual, but delivered as promised!

2 of 5: Upper Pantry Storage

Like pretty much anyone else who's ever planned an IKEA anything, it doesn't take you long to realize that what they don't make, you can easily hack.  i mentioned the hack that we did to create our boxer feeding station!  of course, that wasn't really an IKEA thing, because we'd done that years ago with an unused drawer in our old kitchen.  however, it showed us that just because it may not "fit" in the planner, doesn't mean it can't be done.
I guess we only really have 3 hacks (one more coming soon) in the kitchen, and the pantry/fridge storage is my favorite
i've never been a fan of that useless black hole over a fridge or at the top of a pantry.  whether it's the same depth as the fridge or not, doesn't matter. that space never gets used. at best we throw nic-nac plastic-y pic-nic-y crap up there that we think we'll use for some cookout we're never going to.  with the remodel i swore i would not do that again. and with the remodel, we opted for a counter depth fridge (not sure that was a wise choice but maybe i'll talk about that in detail later, maybe not). so with the pantry & the fridge cabinets, one side of our kitchen was looking like this

pretty standard.  pantry on the left with the upper cabinet & the fridge cabinet overhead.  We used the AKURUM WRD and HD to create this:

AK WRD 498.867.72

+

AK HD 398.868.38

You can see from those pics the the refrigerator cabinet & the top of the pantry cabinet is typically open space.  SO here's where things get all hackey!

Pantry pullout

Refrigerator pullout

Ta-da! not only do we have storage, but we have pull-out storage!  now every time i've shown this to anyone, they've all commented "yeah, but how often do you have to get up there?"  not very often, but they are missing the point!  when i do have to get to something up there, at least it's easy to get to. with 24" deep cabinets, i don't have to struggle reaching all the way to the back to dig something out!  yes, it's still way up there & i'll explain that soon too!

The idea for the shelves came from the pantry actually.  you can tell from the IKEA photo above, that we went with the pantry that included pullout drawers.  well, why not use those same drawers in the top?  seemed simple enough.  we just ordered an extra drawer that matched the ones installed in the bottom section.

Rationell  501.099.84

and

Rationell  201.323.87

For the refrigerator pullout it was a bit more complicated.  we found out quickly that they don't make a 36" wide drawer if you look in the Storage Organizer section.  the widest drawer they have is the Rationell 30" & it's not a Deep Drawer.  i could live without the DD considering this is going above the refrigerator where i hope NOT to spend a lot of time!  but surely they make a 36" drawer b..e..c..a..u..s..e.....we used a 36"AKURUM Base Cabinet with 2+2 Drawers!  see, you gotta think outside the BigBox!  of course i can't find the individual drawer online, but we simply ordered an extra 36" drawer like the base cabinet & used that above the refrigerator.  

UPDATE:  Thanks to Sam's comment below asking for clarification on exactly how we did the refrigerator pullout.  I think at the time i wrote this, i simply didn't remember all the details & didn't want to bother my husband with repeating them.  so i took the time to go back over that hack with my husband & here is what i told Sam:

(1) because we used a 36" base cabinet drawer, there is no hardware for the front.  that means, unlike the pantry drawers, the base or shelf is exposed.  that's the gray-ish part you see running across the bottom of that pullout. they don'tt make a 36" Drawer Front (or didn't at the time), 30" was as wide as they had.  so we bought an extra Drawer Front (901.323.92) just to use the left & right pieces.  this holds the bottom shelf piecce, the tubes that run to the back of the drawer & the "silver" horizontal piece across the front (that's up next).  so you will have to deconstruct the Drawer Front to use pieces of it.  
(2) the "silver bar" going across the bottom front is actually a modified piece of the Rationell Drawer Divider (501.822.53) which does come in 36".  we just used 1 horizontal piece because the whole thing (3 horizontals) would not fit in the Rationell Drawer Front (901.323.98).  we did this just to give us some stability in the drawer & to create a stop for anything that might roll forward.  so you don't have the deep/tall front piece that the pantry drawers have, but at least it's some sort of "lip" that holds things in.  

here's a photo so you can see where we had to chop the Divider down to get it to fit into the Drawer Front 

so the formula is:  Extra 36" Base Drawer + Rationell Drawer Front Kit (size doesn't matter cuz you just want the left & right pieces) + Rationell Drawer Divider (deconstructed to use just the part that will snap into the Drawer front).  

You can see from our finished products that, due to the door hinges, we could not install the drawers in either cabinet at the very bottom.  i wasn't sure i was going to like this at first, that tiny bit of space below the drawer might be wasted.  but so far, it's come in handy for storing flat trays and serving plates.

up next!  how do 2 people who are only 5'5" get easy access to these drawers even though they do pull all the way out.  stay tuned!

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Cushion for the Tush-ion

i cannot believe it has been 2+ months since i've posted anything on the kitchen!  really!  THIS was the last post i think i did. i am failing at so many of the Must Haves of a Good Blog!
so i'm making a goal (not a promise cuz a goal gives me an out):  i will do 5 more post on the kitchen "reveal".  number 5 will be a "finished" post with some before & afters.  no really!  it will!  even though we are not technically finished: 2 more items that stick out in my mind right now.  so....

post 1 of 5:  bench cushions

i know i said in an earlier post that i found a great tutorial at SewMammaSew on how to make your own bench cushions.  and i just knew i could do it myself!  then i pulled a very typical ME.  i read and re-read her post until i talked myself out of it.  also, i needed these cushions done for a cookout that we actually had back in May for Nacho's hockey team victory celebration - they won their league division or whatever!  so this was the weekend before Mom's Day.  that's how long they have actually been done!  nothing like putting a post off eh?
well, suffice it to say, we so many butts riding on the line, i didn't want to take any chances & i actually (head ducking below the monitor here) paid someone to do these for me.  i know i know!  besides, my sewing machine is still in the shop - yeah, cuz that would have made a diff!  i used a local upholstery guy but did stick to my guns & used the shower curtain material that i said i would.  thank goodness i bought so much because i can't find this shower curtain in Target anymore.  so here they are!

not only did the upholstery guy love the pattern, but he thought the use of a shower curtain was genius!  i'd come up with that idea before seeing the SewMammaSew posting, but she certainly solidified my choice!  he did such a nice job & assured me they would hold up fine, certainly until i change my mind AGAIN & decide on some other pattern that i love - i won't even link to the other shower curtains at Target i'm in love with now.  thank goodness i don't really know how to sew or we'd be buried in pillows right now!
i do have some material left over and when i finally get my sewing machine back, i really am going to sew the back pillows myself.  i think i've proven that i'm not afraid to sew a few envelop pillows thanks to Shannon over at Madigan Made!

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talk about indecisive

i realize i will never hear the end of this from Rundle, but i found a photo today that offers even more ammunition against me regarding my indecisiveness:

yeah, we lived with both lights for almost 2 weeks because (1) Nacho only had time to install 1 of the new lights when he got back from Moser's and (2) say it with me everyone.....i wanted to make sure i liked it!  i know!  how did i ever get married?  a lot of booze and a double dare!

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enlightened

technically we are still remodeling the kitchen. like many people, i could say we are "mostly" done & we are and have been for some time. and like most people, we still have that laundry list of little things to complete.  you know, the stuff that never gets done.

my biggest frustration in this entire project was lighting. i was not at all prepared for how expensive lighting is. "shock" is not an adequate word to describe what i felt every time i'd find a light that i loved & then saw the price. i mean, i get it, lighting is important & you want to get it right, but good lord getting it right is expensive.

so i just kept collecting little samples & hoping for the right light to come to me

we have a fortunate friend in Brandi because she was able to get us our final dining room light at a good price.  and while it was not my 1st choice, in the end, it really is the better choice!  as chance would have it, i actually saw my first choice installed in the Barrington Beach House project on This Old House (sikp to scene 8 about 21:24 if you care), and while it's still a beautiful fixture, i'm much more pleased with our choice & think it's more appropriate for our space & style.

the other area i struggled with was the island. finding lighting that i love was never the problem.  finding it at a price i was willing to pay was!  okay, i can justify god knows what for a faucet, but $250 for a light fixture is just ridiculous right?  yeah. so to the InterWebs i went!  i follow several diy "mommy" blogs & got some great ideas.  my best came from The Splurge or The Steal.  i located a similar fixture at Lowes for $30 but, unfortunately, they didn't have a brushed nickel model.  so some hammer spray paint later, i had these!

not bad.  this got me by until i could find something more to my liking (style & price point).  and it was Home Depot that came through for me at $99 each!

Source: homedepot.com via DeNacho on Pinterest

so i was not in complete love with this fixture, just a mild crush. but like all solid relationships, we started off friends & then something just kinda grew out of that. a little more googly googling & i found the standard height for a fixture over an island is 30", so of course, the hardware that comes with a light would be set for that that right? nay! our "out of the box" height was either going to be 27" or 33" - one was too high, the other too low!  so thanks to our good friend Barry, we were able to cut the pipe & he tapped a new thread to get baby bear juuuust riiiight at 30".

so we have a "finished" product.  def. finished = until i see something more shiny! actually,

we are in what i hope is the home stretch of lighting.  we have LED light strips under the cabinets & that gives us good lighting for the bamboo counter tops.  we recycled our old puck lights that once served as under cabinet lights, and now live on top of our cabinets for temporary up-lighting - i plan to replace those with LED strips just like the under cabinets.

however, we still need pot lights around the perimeter areas:  stove, fridge, & dining shelving.  you might notice in the pic above that we do have LED pot/spot lights in front of the windows, 3 to be exact, one for each window. in essence, it has come to this:

thanks to the IKEA online planner, i can at least attempt a lighting layout.  items in yellow represent existing lighting (like the island & dining table).  green represents lighting in question.  see what i'm saying about 1-4? is it enough? too much? am i even close on spacing/positioning? i'm not too worried about 5-8. those will likely be spot lights like the ones currently in front of the windows. 6-8 highlight the shelves & the boxer art & 5 will highlight new boxer art for Baxter! so i'm down to 4 lights & then one more item off the check list - aka Home Stretch!

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splish splash

Warning: Adult Content in this Post!

as usual, i'm about threeee months late posting this, but then you already guessed that. Waaaaay back in November i got Terry to agree to help ME put the tile back splash up in the kitchen.  and by ME i mean Nacho.  i'd mentioned the tile here, so that tells you how long i'd had it sitting in the garagae.  we don't do anything but hockey in a hurry around here.

i know i took a before photo somewhere but cannot find it.  so just close your eyes & picture a plain, basically white wall.  well that wall was starting to see some wear from spaghetti sauce, etc. so we figured we needed to get the lead out & get it tiled.  let's see, the date on my photos say Saturday, November 5, 2011, so it was Wednesday, November 2, that Terry came over to talk through the layout with me.  let me tell you something, there is nothing like watching someone who does this stuff for a living!  i was amazed at how fast he'd figured all the field tiles without really measuring much of anything.  he took one field tile, laid it against the wall, and basically drew all the rest free hand to get an idea of how it would lay.  and remember, we had decided to lay these in a straight horizontal pattern - no brick pattern here.  since we were going to intersperse the glass tiles around the wall, we simply took 10 pieces of paper cut to 4 x 6 & taped those up on the wall.  we did change one thing; we decided to insert some of those on a vertical.  again, impressive that Terry never flinched & just kept laying it all out in pencil.  Terry said i had until Saturday to look at those pieces of paper taped to the wall & change what i didn't like, but i had to stay in the lines drawn for the field tiles.  i didn't change a thing cuz he got it right the 1st time - this is why i picked him!

so Saturday the 5th rolls around and here we go!
field tile on the West & North wall.  notice the little dots between the tiles?  basic nails for spacers!

and here they are again looking mostly at the North wall.  notice the blanks we left for the glass inserts.

the top row was filled in by field tiles cut in half.

Nacho had the glass tiles laid out using a field tile to cut that sheet into 4 x 6 pieces.

while Terry installed them.

Nacho was able to do most of the cutting for the glass sheets on the tile cutter that Terry brought, but he did have to cut some by hand.  and there is 1 glass inset that i had to piece together tile by tile!  so i really did help do the back splash in the end.

our project was not without peril!  we did have 1 accident that i have yet to report to OSHA.  Terry was wiping his hand across one of the tile sheets after Nacho cut it and, not even thinking about what he was doing, sliced his finger.  not bad, but bad enough we had to break out the Finger Condoms for him!

truth be told i think he liked saying this was the only tile job he'd ever had to use a condom on!

after that it was grout, caulk (which yours truly did) & attaching the silver electrical & light plates that i got at Lowe's.  And here kids is our finished wall!

we couldn't be happier!

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Wine-OH!

one of my most favorite parts of our remodel is not the windows. it's not the countertops. it's not really even my faucet that i have promised to marry!  IT'S MY WINE STORAGE!  i think i've mentioned before that i went a little nuts with the whole "storage" idea in this remodel. if there was an empty space under or behind something, i wanted to find a way to use it. i did actually hold back when it came to all that blank space behind the seating in the banquette. you have to stop at some point or people are gonna think you really ARE crazy. i like to think i stopped just this side of crazy.  
the first time i mentioned the wine storage was in my little Check List of items.  i actually did finish it back in August.  okay, the top steps are finished.  and although i have not taken a true After photo, with the steps painted & all, here they are, or rather here they were in August!

how cool is that?!  keep in mind, these are the 2 sets of steps that separate the dining from the living room.  and that's just the first step of storage.  the step below that has drawers that are about twice as deep.  so here's how i did it!  oh, and forgive the pics, cuz, again, in a rush to get photos i used my phone & that's really not the best when you have the shakes from all that wine like i do!

Materials - aside from the drawers themselves that Tom @ PlumCreek made

• i used cork shelf liner (to carry the wine cork theme, but also for grip)
• Xacto knife or Box Cutter - aka Utility Knife apparently in the Mid-West!
• Ruler
• extra wine corks for spacers
• and of course WINE!!!

oh, & btw, that is an original Charles Chips can holding my spare corks. i have 2 of them thanks 2 mom!

Assembly

make sure you have a clean drawer. i vacuumed it out & lightly sanded it.

Special Note:  Nacho had to use the table saw & sander to the bottoms & front panel because i ended up adding thin felt strips to the bottom for glide - or else it scratched my beautiful Marmoleum floor. i found the felt strips at Hobby Lobby & it came in a sheet of 8.5 x 11, just like paper.  even as thin as it was, this would affect the fit so he had to take a little off to make it work. this was trial & error so there were actually multiple trips to the sander & table saw before we got the bottoms & front whittled down so they didn't stick.

now, cut your shelf liner to size. the easy way for me was to actually turn the drawer over & trace the bottom. perfect fit every time - except for the 1st one cuz i didn't think of it until after that!

hold it down & peel it back as you go

and there you have it! a nicely lined drawer!

Spacers
since wine bottles vary in size, i didn't want to put anything too permanent in place where i might run into "accommodation" issues later. not that i can't drink my way out of any "accommodation" issues! but i wanted to leave a little wiggle room inside the drawer.  to do that, i sized the drawer up by laying out a few bottles without everything being crammed bottle-to-bottle.

anyone want to guess my current favorite wine?

take 4 spare corks & hot glue 2 to each side, placing them close to the front & back of the bottles. i figured this keeps the bottles from clanging against the sides of the wood.  i could have fit a 5th bottle in there, but, again, bottle sizes vary so i could run into issues down the road.

dab of hot glue on the bottom of the corks

THIS IS JUST ON THE RIGHT & LEFT OF THE DRAWER! don't hot glue anything in between bottles. i considered & even tried cutting some corks in half lengthwise & whatever the other direction is. wine corks don't cut so well, & since i've had some pretty serious run-ins with sharp objects, i'm restricted on how much i'm allowed to use a knife (just you wait Nacho!). so it was just easier to use the whole cork & glue it in place on each side.
now just lay spare corks in between the wine bottles as you need them.  i used 2 like the sides - 1 to the front & 1 to the back!

and what's nice about this, is as i take a bottle out, if i don't have something to immediately take it's place, i just put a bunch of extra wine corks in the gap until i get replacement wine bought!

and since i have extra space behind the bottles (to the back of the drawer), i just move the spare corks back there when i'm restocking the drawer. that way i always have extra corks right where i need them!

....and just wait! i have more ideas for all those corks! bwah ha ha!

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