Home Improvement
Hey all, I was looking to see if anyone had any storage suggestion ideas for this Dead space. I have behind my refrigerator. I'm only able to reach in. Probably about 3 ft or so, but the space is about 4 ft wide by 7 ft long. The floor of this space is also the ceiling of my basement, so I can't see it supporting very much weight without being reinforced. Looking for ideas if you have any, thanks!
Possessed doll display area.
Maniquin torso storage.
Homelab. Or a pantry with deep pull out shelves. Or open it up on the side of the room through that doorway and convert to a built-in bookshelf or cupboard and close it up on the kitchen side.
Thanks kind of where I'm leaning. Do you know of a track or something that would allow me to pull the storage out?
I'd start with IKEA, for inspiration at the very least. A lot of their kitchen stuff is very modular, so they may have something that could fit in without too much fuss.
Rack tracks exist for this and if you are looking to not get smushed or see your equipment take a fall I'd strongly recommend it.
For a smaller lighter rack many racks can be bolted down and pulled out / rotated.
I second this. Especially if you've the means to vent it appropriately. It will help isolate noise.
And if youre feeling like some minor woodworking... They sell door framing for next to nothing at big box stores.... A thinner one would vastly improve your light switch situation ;)
Make an elevator from the basement to the kitchen. Or just make a hole to the basement, but your laundry basket under and throw your dirty laundry in the hole.
Great idea... Except the laundry is on the same floor :(
Move the laundry to directly under that hole, problem solved
Then a system of vacuum tubes....
I think it is time to move down your laundry!
You could build some shelving and use it as a baking tray holder, with the trays facing vertical. They would be easy to slide in/out.
Agreed, but then the other 5 feet would equally be inaccessible
Have you thought about monsters
The fridge doesn't go in front of it does it? I'd assume not cuz of the light switch.
Store bulk paper products like toilet paper, paper towel, and tissue boxes.
Sorry I probably didn't explain it very well. Nothing goes in front of where that hole is. The way it works is more like that hole is just there and it reaches all the way to the same wall that my refrigerator is on. If that makes sense, I'll see if I can post another picture
Another pic would be helpful, I'm not quite understanding the spatial arrangement you're describing
What's on the other side or the wall?
The "best" use of that space would be to punch a door in the wall and make a floor to ceiling pantry IMO.
Seems just big enough to put in an other smaller fridge.
Cut a hole in the floor in there to the basement.
Run a hotwheels track (or similar) from your countertop, though the storage area, through the floor, and down to the basement.
Or more practically, store big/lightweight items and use a reacher grabber thingy as others suggested.
Steps, cushions, lava lamp ;)
I'd make a pull out pantry but also consider wiring in a battery power station inside to power the fridge during power outages.
I'm sure that floor is the same as the rest of the house, as floor is built first, then walls atop the floor.
So wouldn't worry about the loads it can handle.
also, that light switch box space sawed out of the door frame must be some kind of crime idk 😆
Honestly, honestly. I’d pull off the trim, put a creepy baby doll in there, and patch the hole.
Lol! Not a bad idea. I was thinking I might put a huge shelf in the area, because if I open that door on the left, I could probably slide it out and access every thing.
So odd. The trim on the left has a notch cut in it to accommodate the light switch cover? Seems like it would have been easier to move the box on inch to the right or cut the plastic cover rather than the trim? Why not make better use of the space by accessing it from another wall? This looks like a novice handyman's work. It would make me worry about what you can't see.
Agreed. We moved out to "the country" a few months ago and there are a lot of little... "Why'd they do it that way," kind of stuff.
I bought a house in the inner city like that. Some things off the top of my head: wiring from a wall switch to the ceiling light was wired with an extension cord. Not a heavy duty orange one, the brown twisty kind you would use for Christmas lights. Knob and tube wiring that was capped at a dead end (no junction box) protruding from a hole in a closet. At the panel everything was updated romex so it was tied in somewhere. Never figured out where. Wires were sliced together in the kitchen ceiling without being in a junction box, squirrels got in and would cause it to short out.
An outlet tester costs $10 and will tell you if outlets are wired properly.
It'd need a bit of reinforcement, but maybe a lazy Susan?
you could make it a dumbwaiter for cans, kegs, beer/wine crates or a laundry lift, but then the fridge can't be directly in front.
Dead space means you can make a cool secret room hideout!
Get some realistic skeletons, put them in there, don't tell anyone about it and just seal it and forget about it.
So it’s ~3ft high, 4ft deep, and runs along the wall we are looking at behind the cupboard around 7ft?
I’m assuming the frame on the left is a doorway, as you walk through that door is there a wall on your right that you can make an opening in for this space?
Having a direct shot along the 7ft length you could make some simple trolly platforms or just store boxes along the length with straps attached so you can pull them out from the back.
I have a similar space in my garage over my porch, where I have a pressurised air cylinder, that’s probably more use in a garage than a kitchen… but you could dry your plates really really fast.
Do you know if a trolley or track product I can install there? I'm in really stages of research, but it does seem that closing that hole and accessing it from the left-hand doorway is a good option if I can figure out how to "move that space" out using some kind of wheels or bearings. Thanks!
I’d start with a search for “unistrut” tracks as these are pretty standard across multiple industries and applications, which makes them cheap, then add “wheel trolly”.
One track down each side 4 trolleys per board and make each board two and a bit feet long and you can have 3 down there. Attach them together with some webbing and a couple of snap fasteners, so you can pull each board out and remove it or just let it dangle down the wall.
It's for cadavers, that's why they call it dead space.
Get one of those reacher-grabber things they promot to the elderly; that'll let you access more of the space (you can use the grabber as a pusher as well).
Then store lightweight things that you'd like somewhat accessible and are aggravating to store somewhere else. If this was my mom's space (she loves to travel), she'd store her empty luggage in there. If this was my sister's, she'd put all her holiday stuff into plastic bins with large handles and store that in there.
Fancy water filter, skeleton closet…
Shrine to Damballa.
Drug money.
I mean, the trouble is you gotta move the fridge to get to it, yeah? So surely nothing you'd want to get at frequently.
Christmas/Birthday presents?
Really rare house supplies? Like, say, light bulbs?
One of them portable fireproof safes with important documents?
deadspace
That's two words, my dude.
Thank you for adding to the conversation. Damn bro, you may as well go back to Reddit with that attitude.