Appliance Barn

I had the luckt opportunity when we moved a couple of years back to do anything in my kitchen I wanted to given the available space - it was stripped to the studs and rafters.

One of the things I wanted to do was an appliance bar/barn/ranch - an area where you could have your appliances lined up and need only pull the one you wanted forward to use it. It was largely inspired by Jenise, who has the megabarn of appliance spaces in her kitchen.

I built ours in a hall adjacent to the main kitchen so as not to take up valuable prep space. It is almost 5 feet long (and would have been longer except for the freezer I needed to fit in) and functions by pulling the appliance you want to use forward and using it. Thought I'd post and see if anyone else had the chance to create similar appliance spaces and to solicit photos as it is always great to get ideas for possible future use. The space above mine contains part of my cookbook collection. The barn has a pannini press, a food processor, a mixer, and three coffe related devices, a drip coffee maker, a grinder and an Espresso machine.

I'd urge Jenise to post a picture (if she has a wide angle lens) of her stable, too, as well as anyone else that has arranged not to have to dig appliances out of a cupboard to use them.

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[Jenise]

Oh fun, I'll do it! I absolutely love mine, though it's actually no bigger than yours, just five feet (and I wish it was six so I could keep the Food Saver on it, too). I was inspired to do this because I absolutely detest having appliances on the kitchen counter.

Nice thing about doing it this way is that you still have enough room when they are pushed back against the wall to do stuff on the counter inf front of them.

I chose to use granite on mine - don't recall what yours is. Needs to be smooth enough to facilitate sliding back and forth.

[Jenise]

I put granite in mine, too. Was hardly an extra expense considering the amount of real estate in the main kitchen I was covering in it.

That's basically why I did it too. They were selling by the slab, so when I found out that I was only using a half slab of one of the granites, I had them do the pantry and also cut me a slab as a base for each of my turntables - I tell visiting audiophiles that the material has amazing audio properties but that I just take it for granite.......