Necessity is the Mother of Invention....

The blogger sphere is filled with beautiful home renovations...

It makes one giddy to see all the beautiful design work out there.

But oftentimes you simply do not have the funds to do a renovation... bills have to be paid, the kids needs school clothes, etc. and there is just too much month at the end of the money...





And sometimes you just need to see things in a different light...


Like many houses, my house was built in stages. The main house was built in 1867. There is literally a well underneath the flooring of my kitchen!

Then there was a renovation in the 1920's where the bathroom was apparently added.

And in the 1970's the great room with the two bedrooms and the master bedrooms were added.

And those doing the renovations, often did not do them in the best way. You can see the outline of the window in my living room wall that was once the end of the house.

And in the kitchen, we had a shuttered window with no glass that they just left that way. Huh.



This verbal house tour has a point....

Don't be hating on my lovely Ziebrick wall!

And that point is I needed a spice cabinet and had no walls to really put it on that would be convenient.

But I had a window frame.

And a husband that was both artistic and had an engineering background.

And this is what we did.


After removing all the insulation, etc., we cleaned up the window and stained it.

Steve made some simple shelving to fit into the frame and put a piece of molding on it to prevent any jars from falling over the ledge.

We simply screwed several planks of wood for the backer.

Then we drilled several holes and put in some simple little shelf holders available at all hardware stores.

I purchased a bunch of these little jars at Michaels for about $.50 each and labeled the top with a Sharpie marker.

And there you are... a window turned into a spice cabinet. It looks a bit like a "built in" which I guess it is... and it takes up no additional space.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention!