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(ARA) - If you are like most people, you’re probably close to, or have already run out of room to store “stuff” in your house. The china cabinet and drawers are full, the closets are jam-packed, and you have so many boxes in the garage, they are touching the ceiling. Good thing the latest trend in home decorating is to become more creative with how you use space -- and your home has more of it than you may think. Today’s closets aren’t any bigger, but thanks to closet organizers, you can store stuff more efficiently. Built-in shelves and soap dishes are making storage in the bathroom easier; while built-in appliance garages and storage nooks are doing wonders for the kitchen.
Now you can get a complimentary “customized” look in other rooms in your house without knocking down walls. Just install a recessed cabinet. “The great thing about a cabinet that recesses into the wall is that it can give you a built-in custom look without the custom price, and it opens up space you never thought you had,” says Kevin Shaha, president of Racor, Incorporated, a Sandpoint, Idaho company that specializes in storage solutions.
Racor just introduced an entire line of recessed cabinets after analyzing research that showed do-it-yourselfers want them. There are five different cabinet styles available in the “Nooks Space Creators” line: a four-shelf cabinet that comes with or without a door; a tall cabinet that also has four shelves and a tilt-out drawer; a mail and key cabinet; and a CD cabinet. While they vary in height and style, they are all 19.5 inches wide and 5.75 inches deep -- with the recessed portion of the cabinet measuring slightly less than 14.5 inches wide for an exact fit between the studs used in standard home construction.
“These cabinets can either be recessed into the wall to give the room they’re in a complete custom look, or surface mounted on the wall like a picture frame. It all depends on what the home owner is most comfortable doing,” says Shaha. “We include a template that makes cutting a hole in the wall easy and accurate, instructions on how to determine what might be behind in your walls prior to cutting and all the hardware necessary to surface mount the cabinet if desired.”
The cabinets are available in a white finish that can either be left alone, or painted to stand out as a true decorative piece. Shaha says the tall and four-shelf cabinets tend to end up in bedrooms, family rooms and living rooms; places people want to display collections like golf balls, glasses, action figures or stuffed animals. The most popular places for the mail and key cabinets to go up are in kitchens, dens, or right by the door leading out to the garage. The CD cabinets typically go up in family rooms, bedrooms and dens.
“Recessed cabinets are perfect for any place in the house where you need additional storage space. We’ve even seen people install them in kids’ bedrooms, low to the ground, to serve as bookshelves,” says Shaha. Some other popular storage trends in kids’ rooms these days, using decorative benches that double as storage boxes; using plastic bins that easily slide into a free-standing storage unit; and giving the child his or her own hamper to store dirty clothes in.
For more information about the “Nooks Space Creator” cabinets, log on to www.racorinc.com or call (800) 783-7725 to order direct from Racor or find a retailer near you. The cabinets are also available for purchase via mail order through the Improvements Catalog at www.improvementscatalog.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content
