My wife and I have done a lot of work in our apartment to make it more our own
We gut renovated the place and made lots of changes all at once in the beginning. But over time we've done lots of small projects to finish various parts of the apartment.
Our place is pretty small, tiny by non-NYC standards, and we had precious little kitchen prep space. So it was important for us to use the entire space in a way that was both aesthetically pleasing, but also highly practical.
Above you can see the final product of our prep/storage area, using a card catalog we bought off the street and renovated completely, along with a custom made butcher block and magnetic knife rack.
But we also use a ton of spices and don't really have anywhere to keep them, and in a situation where all space matters, a conventional spice rack is too big.
So we decided to use the wall.
Here's the wall before the spice rack.
Step one was getting a magnetic backing on the wall. We considered using magnetic spice holders on a metal background, but getting a custom piece of stainless steel would be fairly expensive and more difficult to install.
So we decided on a black magnetic backing - the same stuff they glue onto the backs of refridgerator magnets, but in one large rectangular sheet.
The goal was to make it look like a piece of black leather.
Here you can see the raw black magnetic material on the wall.
The back is covered in adhesive, so we just stuck it up there. But the adhesive is not perfect and obviously this looks less than perfect.
In order to get a nice finished look, we needed to get it uniform around the edges. We cut the corners to round them, but we needed to get them flush with the wall.
For that, we needed tiny brass tacks
Space them evenly and hammer them in so they may a small depression, like leather upholstery
These little guys are perfect for this job. First, they are solid brass and quite pretty. And, although they are very shallow and not strong individually, when you combine nearly 100 of them, they provide real structural support in addition to beauty.
An hour of hammering later...
How perfect is that?!
Somehow the tacks really complete the illusion that its a sheet of black leather. But in reality, its just plain old plastic magnetic backing.
The only remaining question is what to hold the spices in. They couldnt be too heavy, and needed a decently wide base so their was more magnetic surface area.
The internet provided the perfect solution.
The perfect size metal containers with tight fitting, see through lids
These containers are quite light, large enough to keep a substantial amount of spice, and with nice lids that allow visual confirmation of the contents. To be totally safe we added handwritten labels.
