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With
the new rack installed, things
were looking pretty good. However, since
I now had a surplus of 4 cases of wine that wouldn't fit
in the cellar, it was time to explore some options for utilizing
the upper reaches of the cabinet.
Just
stacking bottles on the top of the rack worried me. Aside
from the weight factor, there would be the major inconvenience
of having to dig through a bunch of bottles to locate a
specific wine. Something rack-like on the top shelf would
work best; I just wondered what to make them from.
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 Vinotemp
said they didn't want the old rack back, so I decided to
hang onto to it in case the parts could be of value. (Okay,
maybe I'm a packrat.) I figured if I could cut some sections
out of the rack, I would fit them into the right and left
corners up by the cooler unit. It turned out that a section
5-high by 3-wide fit into the area perfectly. This would
give me slots for another 30 bottles on each side, for a
total of 400 in the unit, plus whatever loose bottles I
could still add to the middle. 
By
nature, the original rack design was very flexible - obviously
too flexible, as witnessed by the collapse of the rack in
the first place. So, even though this was just a small section
from that rack, I felt it might still have a tendency to
bend or slump - especially since I couldn't expect to brace
it on both sides. To counteract this, I reinforced the back
of the section with aluminum strapping pirated from the
old unit as well.
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The
resulting additional storage was much needed. Sure, I still
had some of those nasty label-ripping bottle slots. But,
having more room for wine was worth the trouble.
One
thing obvious in the picture at far right, is the different
spacing of the two racks. The old rack could fit nearly
three bottles wide in the same space that now holds two
bottles. Vinotemp certainly did maximize the capacity of
the cabinet in the aluminum/wood design. On the other hand,
many of today's bottles didn't fit into the slots, so I
suppose it's a toss-up.
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The
completed top shelf modification. I use the center section
(just below the cooler) to store mags or other oversize
bottles. Having their collective mass up against the two
smaller racks helps brace the racks even more.
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