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coming unhinged
May 03, 2010
Cleaning out the dish drainer on Friday night, I reached up, put away a bowl, and shut the cupboard door.
Which promptly fell off.
Apparently, 35 or 40 years is all the performance you can expect from a cupboard hinge. And this is a bad thing in several ways. First, I have no door on my cupboard at the moment. This leads to "phantom door syndrome", and I must have attempted to close the door that isn't there around two hundred times this weekend.
Second, my cabinet doors from the early seventies are inch-thick slabs of oak that weigh a ton and require a heavy-duty hinge to carry that weight.
Third, because of the age of the cabinets, they sport ornate, semi-exposed hinges in an antiqued brass finish. They don't make hinges that look, fit, or work like the ones I need to replace! At least, you can't find them at any of the area big-box home centers. I will have to fall back on the 'net and hope I can find what I need, because I really can't afford to replace all the cabinets because of one broken hinge.
UPDATE--
Got to give Spouse some credit. He remembered that we have, down in the far reaches of the basement, an old kitchen cabinet hanging on the wall, left over from the when previous owners of the house remodeled the kitchen. He simply removed one of its doors, took off the hinges, and made the repair. That's using your bean.
So�what else did the weekend bring, besides running around in a vain search for hinges? Well, in other cupboard related news, I got back on my systematic schedule of kitchen clutter control. I FINALLY cleaned out the huge, awkward lower corner cupboard in the kitchen. I say FINALLY, because seriously�this is something I have managed to put off for years. Because the damned thing is huge, but only has a small door towards one end, it's dark, incredibly hard to reach the back of, and just a dreadfully impractical thing. I'm not doing justice to its awfulness with this description, but believe me, it's not the first time this damned thing has defeated me.
Anyway, I pulled out every single thing that was in there, and threw most of it away. Since it was probably seven years since I'd been all the way to the back of that thing, I felt confident in pitching out such things as bread baskets, old mason jars, and even some out-dated canned goods that were rolling around back there.
I kept the partial bottle of Canadian Club, though. I've had that bottle for at least 11 years, and the whiskey was 6 years old when I got it, so it's probably pretty mellow by now, huh?
When it came time to fill the black hole back up, I worked from the back forward, in keeping with my usage-based storage system. Started at the back, with "crap I can't sell or toss until my parents are gone" (Pfaltzgraf, mostly) , then added "stuff I use only for parties or holidays" (relish trays, chip & dip, extra pitchers) in the middle, and finished with "large, oddly-shaped items I use fairly often" (cake box, griddle, salad spinner, giant Tupperware bowl) at the front.
This plan also allowed me to conquer another dreaded area of my kitchen at the same time. THE PLASTICS & STORAGE CONTAINERS. A cupboard so chaotic and evil that Spouse refused to ever go in there. But, with the cupboard from hell cleared out and now holding the extra pitchers and the party trays, I could finally get it under control. Again, pulled everything out, pitched anything that was outgrown (my youngest sippy cup user is 17, fer cripe's sake!), worn out (stop being sentimental about a 2001 travel mug from the Hard Rock Hotel; the lid has leaked since 2005!), or was missing a component (bowls with no lids, lids with no bowls).
I got rid of so much stuff you could hold a dance in there.
Of course, Spouse is more terrified than ever, because he's afraid of messing it all up again.
I also finished a beading project, had breakfast with Niece, did the laundry, went grocery shopping, made macaroni salad, baked beans, coleslaw, and fresh-squeezed lemonade, bought a new lunch cooler, changed the water filter, and even allowed myself some laziness here and there. Altogether, a fairly decent weekend.
Reading: Just finished or am currently reading: "The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch: Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys ", by Laura Lee Hope, "The Riddle of the Third Mile", by Colin Dexter, and "Bodies", by Robert Barnard. I know that first one wasn�t in the slush pile, but I lucked out and found MPG volumes 5 through 7 online, so I had to sneak them into the list. I prefer to take these series in order, as much as possible.
Surfing: Hinges.
Listening:
At Random:
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