I hate the toaster sitting on the counter. I had the hood for the Black and Decker Space Saver toaster in Texas and loved having the toaster oven hanging, but oh my god what a difficult install. The front edge of the hood scratched up the bottom front edge of the wall cabinet and getting the toaster to actually hang from the hood was a nightmare I wouldn’t want to try again. Moot point since they no longer sell the space saver toaster oven.

Some may be cringing that having the toaster oven right under the upper cabinet isn’t safe. After many years of having one hanging with no problems, having never set a toaster oven on fire, and knowing I have put things on top of my current toaster oven while in use with nothing melted all make me not worried. I wanted a toaster oven shelf and the counter clear underneath.

Planning

 

After deciding where I wanted the shelf I hung black construction paper cut the size of the toaster oven from the front edge of the cabinet and lived with it a couple of days to make sure I would like it.

There is an electrical outlet that would interfere with where the shelf would hang. I obviously need the outlet so the toaster oven could be plugged in, but I wasn’t sure what to do about the shelf.

Installing the brackets

I installed the brackets and had everything go wrong. One of the wall anchors went right through the wall which left a hole and no way to add a fastener for the lower hole of the right bracket. Oh joy. I thought maybe a well installed anchor in the top hole would be good enough (foolish thinking for a shelf that would hold an appliance). I finished getting the brackets up only to discover they weren’t level. I was so disgusted that after getting all the anchors out I packed up my toys and put them away for the day to ponder my dilemma. Actually I was pouting, but pondering sounds so much better. I had 4 big holes to fill and since they wouldn’t be usable a second time I had to figure out where I could hang the brackets.

Round two for installing the brackets 

Okay, let’s try this again. I couldn’t get a level against the drywall because of the electrical outlet so I temporarily pulled it out (with the power turned OFF). It hadn’t been installed all the great and I wanted to get in better position anyway.

I got the left bracket up and the top screw for the right bracket and did a sanity check. Guess what — they weren’t going to be level again. I took the brackets down and checked the holes in the back of my Rubbermaid brackets and they weren’t the same! No wonder. I had to do the holes differently for the right bracket to get the whole mess to be level.

The shelf

I had purchased a 24″ black Rubbermaid shelf and cut it a little shorter. The cut end would be almost against the refrigerator so not visible. I was kind of disappointed by the poor quality of the shelves in stock at HD — lots of chips out of the edges so I had to go through many to find a decent, yet still not perfect one.

I measured where the electrical outlet would fall and used a trim router to notch out about 1/4 inch strip a little wider than the outlet plate so there would also be room for the cord.

I had some black acrylic paint so I painted the cut edge, the notched area, and all the little chipped spots and let it dry.

 

 

Putting it all together

I put the shelf up and marked where the holes were in the top part of the brackets with a chalk pencil. I carefully drilled holes to make sure I didn’t go all the way through the board.

I plugged the toaster in and then slid the shelf into place so the cord would sort of be locked against the wall. I put small screws through the bottom of the brackets into the shelf so it couldn’t fall down.

I put the toaster oven in place with most of the cord tucked behind it. Here’s pictures of how it all turned out.

 

 

 

Now I need to buy more nautical charts so I can finish the backsplash behind the toaster oven shelf. Maybe should have done that before, but I’m not worried. I love having the toaster up off the counter now.

I’ve lived with it about a month now, using the toaster oven regularly, and the toaster oven shelf is wonderful.