As is true for many of us, my cheese "cave" is a wine fridge. It serves quite well for a cheese cave, with the ability to set my desired temperature exactly as needed. However, there has always been one very, very annoying thing about using this "cave" -- the original heavy-wire shelves were, oddly enough, made to hold wine bottles. Thus, rather than being flat, with closely-spaced wires, they are wavy, with the wires well spaced apart.
The only way that I have been able to use these shelves, in the year+ that I have had this "cave," is by putting a wooden cutting board or something similar on top of the wavy shelf. Not only does this take up extra room, but it means I only get partial use from each shelf, since the cutting boards are not the same size or shape as the shelves.
This weekend, I finally got around to rectifying the problem. I made a set of new shelves by ripping some poplar boards that I had on hand into 1" wide x 3/8" thick strips. The top of each of these strips was rounded off before ripping, and the sharp edges on the bottom were softened with a hand plane. I made a jig to let me assemble these to fit the shape of the original shelves -- not quite rectangular; they need to be about 1/2" wider at the front than at the back.
The pictures below show the results. The first picture includes one of the original shelves in front of the closed fridge; the second has the door open for a better view inside. Here's the payoff -- with the old, clunky configuration, this cave was mostly full. As you can see in the pictures, now I have quite a bit of room to make more cheese!
