Talkin' trash

There's a blog I follow called Young House Love. It's written by a young couple who regularly tackle DIY projects, 

and I've learned all sorts of tips and tricks from their posts. Last week they shared a small kitchen upgrade 

that got me so inspired, I ran right out to Lowe's to pick up the parts.

If Johnny would get out of the way, you would see that I bought this thing called a Rev-a-Shelf.

It's a contraption that you install inside a cabinet whereby your trash can slides in and out when you open the cabinet door.

Since dealing with trash is my least favorite chore, I was totally psyched 

to have a new gadget which might ease the trauma.

I knew going into the project that there would be problems opportunities for ingenuity 

because the kit was not a perfect fit for any of my cabinets,
but I tried to maintain a positive attitude as I began to trash my kitchen. 

Plan A would have been the ideal location to install the new gadget because this is the cabinet I've been opening for eight years to deposit my trash. Alas, I wasn't in the mood to reroute the plumbing to accommodate the new, taller trash can. Sure, I could have used the old, shorter can with the new gadget, but what fun would that be? With the bigger can, I won't have to take out the trash as often. 

It would be worth my time and effort to make it work elsewhere, even if elsewhere means 

I'll be opening the wrong cabinet for the next few months years as I adjust to the new location. So on to Plan B...

The Rev-a-Shelf kit is meant for a cabinet with an opening of 11.5". My cabinet had an opening of 10.5".  Hmmm.

And this is why God invented chisels. 

A few taps here, a few taps there, and soon the slider cleared the newly widened opening.

A few more taps here and there, then the trash can also cleared the opening.

I could have stopped there, put the cabinet door back on, and called it done, but no –
I had to go for the extra-lazy option, the one where the can slides out automatically when you open the door.

This involved a separate kit with a bunch of brackets which would be "easy as 1-2-3" to install. Yeah, right.

But amazingly, it was pretty easy – so easy, it can even be done wearing slippers.

The kit included some sticky stuff that allowed me to position the cabinet door 

and align the brackets before any screws were screwed.

And it only took a dozen or so trips back and forth to the garage to amass all the stuff I needed to complete the job.

More importantly, the entire project took only one trip to town, which is some sort of record.

Me: Look, Smooch! It works!

Smooch: I have no idea why she's so stinkin' excited about a sliding trash can, 

but if I pretend I'm interested, maybe I'll get a cookie.