What To Do With The Microwave

I remember the arrival of my family's first microwave sometime in the early 1980's.  It was, as I recall, a big deal.  My mom and a friend even took a microwave cooking class.  This thing wasn't just for reheating leftovers, oh no, you could make entire meals!  In a fraction of the time! :)

 In houses that were built before microwaves were standard kitchen fare, there isn't always a great place for the microwave.  Ours has set on our counter since the day we moved in.  Occasionally for parties, we'd plop it on top of the dryer to get it out of the way.  I knew I wouldn't want it to sit on our lovely new counters once they are installed, but what to do with it...To have one mounted above the stove would require some cutting down of the cabinets above the stove and that made me very nervous.  We'd talked about buying a front loading washer and dryer and stacking them to make more room in the utility closet, but that's expensive.  So...

 Above the dryer in our laundry room, er, closet, it went.  There used to be three long 12 inch deep shelves here.

 David made a new 18 inch shelf for the microwave to sit on and added some support for it and the remaining shelves.  My grand contribution was staining the new shelf.  He did an excellent job and it looks great!  It doesn't seem like having that off the counter will make a big difference, but it really does in a small kitchen.

 As a side note, this was the laundry palace in my old house.  I had no idea how spoiled I was by having room for a clothesline right there in the house!