Renovation

We got this email on Sunday night from a reader in Clinton Hill:

We wrapped up a fun and easy and cheap project today that might be of interest to wine geeks—setting up that little front basement room as a wine cellar. The husband re-attached the original door to this little storage room in the front of the building, which is good because that room has a nice, cool exterior wall (door was sitting in rear of basement) and slapped some insulation on the back of it. Ideal long-term wine storage temp is 55 degrees, and our boiler makes the cellar pretty toasty. So far it’s working great, at least in winter. We’re steady at 58-59 degrees, which is fantastic. Need to figure out the humidity—we have a gauge on back order.

Racks are mail-order from wineracksamerica.com —reasonable prices, really easy assembly, and tons of capacity. In a room that’s about 6-by-8, we can handle about 450 bottles now, and could add more racks if we wanted to. As you can see, we have a ways to go just filling up the racks we have. But today’s piece-de-resistance: The chandelier (photo on the jump), formerly hanging (ridiculously) in the front parlor of the house. Way too small, too junky-crappy for a parlor, but delightfully piss-elegant for a teensy wine cellar. Also added a blessedly needed outlet to cellar, too.

Has anyone else undertaken a similar project without the help of a contractor?