Use of Small Space

David gurleyen
by David gurleyen
3 Materials
$140
1 Day
Medium
A friend asked me what he could do with a small space.
This is the space, a tiny area beside his fridge. What we came up with was a storage solution to house all of his cook books, simple enough yet hard enough project to do.
I went to the hardware store and brought white Malamine with PVC edging, shelf pins, screws and PVA glue. With all the material brought, it was time to head home and start the project.
The first step was to cut all of the boards into size, on my trusty table saw. You can cut it with an electric saw or have it cut to size at your local hardware.
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In this case, the size for the bookshelf was, Height 1700mm x Depth 310mm x Width 250mm. So you can see by the size of this bookshelf, it is a bit small but it can be done.
With a drop saw, I cut the length of the board, off to the next stage.
At this stage, I'm getting the board ready to make the adjustable shelving. I used my router and it's track. First step is to mark out all your shelf holes, they are set out at every 32mm, so it's 32mm, 64mm and so on, all the way down the length of your board.
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This process is repeated on both sides of the first board as well as the other board. When doing this take your time and measure, be very precise in marking holes for the shelf pins, otherwise if you mark wrong the shelf will not sit properly.
As you can see, I am using my router to plunge in the holes after I have marked it all. You can make the holes either 5mm or 6mm, I chose 5mm. You can buy adjustable shelf pins at your local hardware.
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What I did here, pushing my router on the track to every mark that I made on the board at plunging it down to an adjusted depth to create my pin holes, rather lengthy process but it must be very precise and careful at this stage, otherwise it can result in bad shelf lining. Take your time and do it one at a time and it should go well.
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Just a note, you can do this process with a hand held electric drill and a 5mm drill bit but you have to be very controlled.
Time to assemble all the pieces that I cut and drilled. I started with the back and two sides. You need to pre drill and then screw. Once you join the back and one side pre drilling and screwing together, then you can add the bottom piece and screwing that to the frame. I continued this process with all of the pieces until I made the box.
With that complete, it was time to make the base, as shown here.
This is the base for the bookshelf. 4 pieces cut to size and screwed together. Once this was complete, I screwed this base to the unit, as above.
At this stage the base is screwed on to the bookshelf and all the shelves are fitted in. The time I took to do my shelf holes, there is the result, the shelves were straight.
There it is in place, next to the fridge with enough space to open the fridge doors.
Suggested materials:
  • Malamine   (Bunnings)
  • Screws   (Bunnings)
  • Shelf Pins   (Bunnings)
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