The Launch Pad

Here's the new launch pad at Dun Elsie. This is an area with our cell phones and a place to put anything we don't want to forget to take out the door with us when we go.

This is the culmination of a long term project that I've been working on for over a year. As you can see we have our cell phones on two Touchstone wireless chargers and our kitchen phone all in the same place. This way if something rings, you always go to the same place.

Also, cell reception is lousy in our house other than in the kitchen by this wall.

You walk in the door, put your phone down on the charger and it magnetically "sticks" and starts charging.

The launch pad itself is just a simple corner shelf with the power cords to the charging bases hidden in a tiny gap. The cords themselves go through a small hole drilled into the cabinet you see on the left, where they plug into a powerstrip.

The result is -- even up close you see no cords at all. Pretty nifty!

The power strip lives in the charging cabinet which I created to charge all of our electronic devices out of sight, without any visible tangle of cords.

The girls' DS games, the electric toothbrush base and other devices can be charged in the cabinet and easily found when preparing to head out on a road trip.

I also have my watch and change catcher, as well as cases in the charger cabinet so that everything is centralized.

More information on the charger cabinet. I needed a pantry for our kitchen when we were fixing up our kitchen but all the ones I could find were too expensive or two feet deep. Instead I took three wall cabinets and attached them to the wall one on top of each other. At the base I installed four bun feet simply screwed into the base cabinet and finished with tounge oil. This cabinet works out great and actually cost less to construct that many of the pre-fab pantries.

The small middle cabinet was planned from the begining as a charger cabinet and has a hole cut into the back to allow access to the wall outlet before it was hung. Works great!