Javaandjazz..we are shopping for a nice wrought iron or heavy metal outdoor baker's rack for our patio and yours looks pretty sturdy..Mind sharing where you purchased it? Do you leave yours out all winter or take it inside during the wintertime? I've been thinking about what I'd furnished it with and more ideas are coming to my mind as I look at other's pictures. I love the silk forsythia branches attached to the top..I just happen to have some silk forsythia branches or maybe it's part of a wreath that I saw in one of the garage cabinets yesterday..have to investigate what it is and if I could use it. I'm planning on adding a few potted up annuals for color..probably inpatients or geraniums,a decorative birdhouse, a large textured metal star that I saw at Joann's crafts store and I'm sure I can find other things here at home or in craft stores for a reasonable price.

I have four dumbbells, and made a basement rack out of 3/4" plywood for them. Two of my three barbells are downstairs. But it turned out that I really needed two dumbbells upstairs. I have not made a rack for them yet. I already had many wood DIY shelf units, so a space was found between two existing shelf units that was just large enough for the barbells. This way I did not have to worry about attaching to a wall. I just screwed two pieces of plywood to the existing shelves. They already had four cut outs for my four dumbbells to be slip into. Six screws did the trick, it rests on the floor. My dumbbells are the Wal-Mart screw on type that take plates. Since I keep wood scraps it didn't cost anything to make the rack.

Is it for display or dish draining? If for draining wet dishes (that get later put away in cupboards) then I think that function would outweigh any drawback - assuming you had thought through any downsides to drips off the wet plates. (Some people would go nuts with dripping/spotting issues.) However if for display purposes I would think twice. I know at my sink I often have lots of steam (dumped pasta water, for example) and from daily hand dishwashing, a lot of potential for stray droplets of water/soap to fly around. (I use my hand sprayer for really hot rinses of stuff in the drainer rack fairly often and it splashes.) I also wash everything by hand not liking a DW, so YMMV. My final issue is that unless everything is used every day you are setting yourself up for having to re-wash each time before reuse. That's what happens in my house to open-stored stuff. It's one thing to have to rewash essentially display pieces every now and then. But for stuff I might use to get out a meal, I want to know it's ready for use before I reach for it. If it needs rewashing, again, sometimes I just feel like throwing it across the room instead! Maybe if I used a DW it wouldn't bug me so much - but one trip through the washing process per item per use is my hard limit. I have had open storage of dishes and cookware on shelves, plate racks (both over sink) and a pot hangar for a couple of decades and in my new kitchen there won't be any of it, if I can help it. I was beguiled by the look, but in practice I loathe it. And since I've been looking at it since the late 1980s, it looks pretty passe to me, despite it's current flash of popularity. (Probably seems trendy to all those people who have had -quite sensibly - closed or fitted kitchens up till now.) My kitchen is an historically unfitted one (same as it was in around the time of the Civil War). As for your question of depth. My own above-sink open shelves are 12" deep and while I don't find them troubling, my much-taller DH does. They are up about 24" (I'll be glad to measure if that's important) from the counter. Fifteen inches would seem to me to be encroaching and would be much more troubling to my DH; assuming I liked the look and function of the set-up I have now, I would be looking at making it narrower, not deeper. HTH, L.

You use a pot with loose tea....one spoon for each cup and one for the pot....then pour into each cup using the strainer. Ideally you should spoon the tea out from a tea caddy with a tea caddy spoon and have a matching bowl to rest your strainer in and have standing by a mote spoon in the event that any leaf gets into your cup and in case the spout to your tea pot gets clogged with wet leaves, you can use the pointy end of the mote spoon to clear the clog. And remember to say please and thank you and use your napkin and don't chew with your mouth open!