apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My grandparents had this in a house they built in 1976-77. But theirs was double -- one compartment for papertowels, a second compartment with two rods, one for tinfoil and one for saran wrap. It was pretty great.

I would say, re purpose this to make it greener - paper towels= bad, clever cubby for something else? = good.

Like ljbmonkey's grandparents, my mother had a three tiered holder that could sit on the counter top or be hung on the wall, and through the years she used it both ways. We kept foil, waxed paper, and paper towels in it.

I hated it, because if it didn't tip over on my hand, the sharp teeth of the cutter would nick me. It was unhandy for paper towels because you had to open the holder to get at the towels. But she used it for 20 years or so, until she remodeled her kitchen.

my grandma has one too (put in around 1990? when the remodel was done, i think)

she actually has 2.

one for the paper towels and the other is for tin foil and wax paper.

the only problem is that the paper towels now come so "jumbo-sized" that when she puts in a new roll, she can't close it for a while because there's not enough space in the wall part.

The townhouses in Detroit's Lafayette Park neighborhood, which were designed by Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer and built in 1959, had these in the original kitchens, along with smaller dispensers for tinfoil and wax paper. They're right next to the Murphy stovetops...

ceedetroit, those sound like pretty nifty kitchens. Any pics online, that you know of?

If you're going to repurpose it, how about
- built-in bookcase for cookbooks
- mini-gallery (showcase 1 lovely, kitchen-friendly art item with a small spotlight)
- aquarium
- is it deep enough to hold wine bottles horizontally? then, just buy one of those expandable wine racks or DIY it

Wish there were! There's a slideshow featuring one of the townhouses on Dwell's website from an article about the neighborhood, but no good kitchen images there.

We have the paper towel holder compartment and another for the rolls of tinfoil, etc. Yes, you do have to buy small rolls of paper towels for the compartment to shut. Yes, the teeth on the tinfoil cutters are sharp. Otherwise, it was kind of fun thing to find in our place.

What a crazy little contraption! Personally,the handle would become a mess, because if I am reaching for some paper towels my hands need to be wiped. I do like the idea of the foil and wax paper (possibly press and seal holder. To remedy the nicking yourself on a blade, hacking one of those little glider blades for cutting to replace the long toothed blade, could be a possibility.

Could be cool to turn it into a spice rack.

we had one growing up - nothing fancy - just something my dad decided he wanted to try and make. works great 20 years later!

I've seen these before, but like other people have said...they were using foil and wax paper instead.