I have always wanted a pot rack in my kitchen, but because I don’t have high ceilings, I never had room for one. Then one day a problem with one of my kitchen cabinets led me down a path that resulted in an unusual but wonderful fix — I replaced the cabinet with a wall-mounted pot rack.

See, my kitchen cabinets are all along two walls, with a door on either end (one to the garage, one to the deck). The builders decided to maximize the cabinets within that span and ended up putting a single overhead cabinet all by itself on the end (Fig 1).

I always thought that cabinet looked a little funny there all by itself, but I needed the space, so I used it. In fact, I loaded it so full of dishes that over time, it began to come loose from the wall! With no cabinets next to it to help support it, that cabinet just couldn’t handle the weight on its own. Fortunately I noticed the problem BEFORE anything came crashing to the floor. I emptied the cabinet and took it off the wall to repair it.

A funny thing happened, though… once the cabinet was off the wall, I loved the look of it so much that I didn’t want to put it back! (Fig 2) The kitchen looked so much more open with that cabinet gone, but I still needed the storage space. Jo and I finally came up with a great idea — I replaced the cabinet with a wall-mounted pot rack. I knew how much Jo loves her pot rack, and I knew I always wanted one, so it was the perfect solution.

I patched and painted the wall and mounted the pot rack (be sure to find the studs!) securely. Then I simply moved all the pots and pans to the rack (Fig 3) and then moved the dishes that used to be in that cabinet over to where the pans used to be. Because I selected a shelf-style rack, I also have room on top to store more pans or cookbooks.

I love the result and I’m so glad that cabinet fell apart!