Our poor tools. Remember when they used to live in our kitchen?
When a cabinet got removed a few months ago to make way for a large peninsula during a kitchen update, our tool storage had to move too.
It didn’t disappear — it just ended up in the sunroom, our unofficial cabinet purgatory. The drawers filled with tools have been strewn across our daybed for months. Not exactly organized.
With three weeks of photoshoots for our book underway, space became even more valuable. New items like a large white backdrop and photography gear needed room, and that bulky cabinet was taking up prime real estate.
Plus a lot of photography equipment started crowding the house.
We decided to stop moving the cabinet around and do something permanent: retrofit the existing piece to better suit our needs. Since we already owned it, reworking the cabinet was free and practical.
The first step was removing the upper section that previously housed a wall oven and cabinets. We tipped the cabinet on its side and used a straight edge to mark the cut.
I used a jigsaw to slice across each side at the top drawer line, separating the top from the drawer base.
That left two pieces. The top portion came apart after a bit of demolition and went into the recycle pile. The remaining drawer base became our working storage unit.
We’ll call the top section scrap — we’ll check with our local recycling center about clean wood disposal. The drawer base, though, found a new temporary home in the corner of the sunroom. It’s functional now, but we plan to tackle primer, paint, and updated hardware later to improve its look.
For the first time in more than three months, our tools are back in working, pull-out drawers. It’s a small change, but it makes the space feel more normal again. (Yes, one drawer sat on top of the unit temporarily — floor space is scarce during photo week with people, cameras, tripods, and reflectors everywhere.)
I skipped showing the inside of the drawers this time — they still need organizing — but the big cabinet that we’d been dragging from room to room is finally gone. After more than 100 days of tools scattered on the daybed, this feels like a long-overdue win.
Have you been holding onto or retrofitting furniture for too long? Who else has a cabinet purgatory in their home? Tools seem to end up in a lot of different places: the garage, the basement, the kitchen, a spare room, the attic, or a shed. Tell us where you store yours — and if you’ve reclaimed a piece of furniture like this, what did you do to make it work?
Psst — we announced this week’s giveaway winner. Check our giveaway post to see if you won the hundred dollar flower prize.