One of the problems in our kitchen is that the telephone jack and a power point (where we plug in the phone and one phone charger) were kind of ‘in your face’ in that they were to the right of the ‘servery’ into the living room, but not lined up vertically or horizontally. Hard to hide in other words.

Here’s a photo of the ‘pre’ kitchen and you can see how I dealt with it before. An old drawer, with a hole cut out to expose the phone jack, held the phone, a framed print of a rabbit (cause why not?) and some of my 50’s collectibles.

Of course the powerpoint was lower and to the left, so that remained exposed along with the accompanying ugly cords.

When we were doing the kitchen and Handyman was lining walls with pine, I asked him to move the power point and phone jack so that they were closer and neater.

I wanted to create a ‘charging station’. A place to keep and charge our mobile phones and landline. And hide the mess of cords and plugs.

I have a ton of stuff in my workshop and the shed, including a stack of drawers I picked up off the roadside one day. I evaluated them and thought one of the drawers would be perfect. It had an unusual shape – it was long, one section had 4 holes, and a dip in the sides. No idea what a drawer like that would be for.

Here it is after a coat of milk paint.

I took off the handle on top, filled the holes. then did a few coats Lichen milk paint to stop the paint flaking off too much in some spots.

I had to somehow hide the holes in the back… We buy our timber from a local guy who mills his own wood and cuts his own boards. Last time I was at his place I picked up a few of the trimmings he’d cut off the ends of his boards when dressing them. They were the same width but irregular thicknesses so I sorted through and picked the bits which were more of less closest in thickness.

I cut them to size, sanded the weathered layer off and glued them to the back of the drawer.

I really need to go back and get more of them. They’re great!

This was the plan: the top shelf would hold the landline phone station. The bottom section would have a shelf added up the top to hold our mobiles. Below would be a door to hide the power points, cables and chargers.

I made the shelf out of an offcut of pine since I planned to paint it and it didn’t have to match. I put a ‘lip’ on the shelf in tassie oak, matching it to lining and so mobiles won’t fall off. I drilled 3 holes in the bottom shelf (one for the landline cables, one for each of our mobiles) and one hole in the original shelf for the landline cables.

Now I needed a powerboard, giving us enough power points for 2 mobiles and a cordless phone.

Since the idea was to hide the mess behind a door, I cut a hole in the drawer… badly. Necessitating the addition of trim to neaten it up. eh. That part will be hidden most of the time. 

The worse problem was that when it was finished, I screwed it to wal, plugged everything in, then discovered that the mobile chargers were too fat for the door to close properly!

Sigh…

I had to cut out the entire bottom back of the drawer to give them a bit more room.

Goodbye trim.

I’m such a professional!

Anyway… next came the exciting part. The door.

A barn door with Zs at the back.

I always wanted to make a door with Zs at the back.

I bought the smallest T hinges I could find and a silver handle I kinda liked. But I didn’t want them looking new, so I painted them. Tons. So they’d look like they’d been used for years on many different cabinets.

I also got a magnetic catch as a closer since I planned to swing the door downwards, like an oven door.