Tiny House Tanzania Episode 6 -building Kitchen Furniture

November 07, 2015

This weeks blog is getting back to working on the house and the next couple of weeks will be a mix of the house work and site work. This is a very busy time of year on site as I am trying to wrestle information out of staff to start our end of year reports all while trying to get several projects both personal and site completed before I depart for the states in December. With all that I was not able to do a video edit for this weeks episode so sorry you have to actually read it.

One of the issues I have talked about in the past with a tiny house and renovating it is not having any room to put things while you work on one room or another. It honestly has begun to pile up on me as I try to handle some of the work to be done. The kitchen actually got to the point where I was having trouble walking through without knocking something over. Add that to always having to work from the floor or unsteady stacks of boxes while I cook and I decided it was time to tackle the kitchen storage and cook area.

Placing one pot on the floor while another one is being cooked.

I often stack my boxes up to create a work surface for chopping or mixing as I did with the spam here

The original plan was to build a wide shelving unit basically the same depth as kitchen cabinets and that way I would have significant work area and could have a wash station and cook station all present in one area. I scrapped that idea for cost reasons and because I decided I needed a larger wash station area (currently I have one dispensing bucket and wash basin and I want to go to two). So I decided to make the shelving units a foot deep. The long one running along the wall I may eventually put a refrigerator if I upgrade my solar would be the one with the most shelves for stacking my various plastic containers I use to protect all items from the critters. The other unit would be a two shelf unit for storing large item and having a work surface at the top.

The first thing to do is cut the ends of my structural tube straight and then begin measuring for the various parts I want to make. I decided to leave my structural tubing on the outside of the structure so I would not have to notch my wood pieces to fit around them since I don't have a jig saw yet (already have the funds for thanks to generous supporters just have not picked it up yet). So I built the two long rails and then welded them together using the short angle iron pieces.

The night guard and groundskeeper both got involved helping because they want to play with all the toys. Unfortunately I am used to building things by myself so having to stop and explain things and then teach them how to properly use a tool ate up a lot of time for me. But all the same they chipped in.

Let met tell you that sanding a piece of wood down with an electric plate sander takes around 20 minutes as opposed to my normal 2 1/2 hours by hand.

One difficult task was keeping the wood all in groups because the helpers would constantly mix them up. Not so bad before sanding and I could write on them which shelf they were for but after sanding it caused some problems and eventually I had to tell my helpers to quit helping me pick the wood up.

This is the long unit after priming. I painted the metal a color called Brilliant green which if my RGB scan of the photo I took is correct it is closer to Forrest Green. I was hoping for something a little lighter even if I am color blind.

This is the shorter unit with two shelves. You may notice the scrap pieces of roofing I set it on to protect from the sand. The night I made these and painted them as well as varnishing the wood shelves was our first freak rain in October and it happened in the middle of the night. The rain did not cause a problem with the paint or stain but the rain came down so hard it sprayed sand all over the items and the sand became a permanent part of both the varnished wood and painted metal. Normally I would sand it all down but I decided it wall all floor level and considering the fact it will be covered with bat crap most of the time it just did not matter that much.

Here is the final product installed but not quite finished with the organization yet.

After I made this I realized I needed something over the unit to hang my utensils and store dishes upside down on. So I made a unit from angle iron. I started by laying out a 45 degree triangle and needed to determine the length of c. Now it would be easy to calculate in metric that length but when using english unit (feet and inches) honestly it easier to lay it out and measure it.