3 small DIY projects for better kitchen storage and organization. Kitchen cabinets and drawers can store more than you think!
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72.3% of your kitchen
cabinet storage is taken up just by air. Hello in there. So here are three small projects
to reclaim the dead space in your kitchen Cabinets and drawers. The first project is the easiest by far. It takes hardly any tools
and just a little bit of wood, And that is optimizing your upper cabinets
and adding extra shelves where you can. Now, this might sound simple and basic,
and that’s because it is. That’s the beauty of it. Now, just because they only give you three
shells doesn’t mean you can’t add more. And this is going to be perfect For those cabinets to have items
that are under about six inches. So all we have to do is start moving
these adjustable shelves down. Then I’ll show you how to add in new clips And make a shelf
that fits in perfectly with the factory. Once I make a lot of plywood projects
and I keep some offcuts on my wood racks, I’m going to use this to find a piece. I’m just going to lay this shelf on top
and I’m going to have to measure. I’m just going to trace my line,
and that’ll be my cut line for this all. Now, like I said, no fancy tools. I’m just going to using a circular
saw for this cut and use this Kraig straight edge,
five inches away from my cut line To offset for the circular saw
base and then make the cut. Oh man. I have forgotten how much dust a circular
saw throws off. Yes, you could use one. I am not going to do it
for even this next cut. I’m going to grab my tracks off Which the dust collection
is supremely better on just get it tracks. I’ll save your lungs. It is so much better. Oh, that was horrible. Now, hopefully you all know
that you are being catfished here. This is obviously not solid wood,
even though they would like us
To think that this is particleboard
with a very thin veneer. That’s not even real wood. It is a sticker
and it has some edge banding. It probably even
has it on its tinder profile. Oh, solid wood.
And looking for a good time. Holding heavy objects
but not too heavy doesn’t like water. So we are going to go ahead and put some
lipstick on this pig of our own And we are going to cover up This edge of the plywood
with some iron on edge banding. So here’s our iron on edge banding. This is birch veneer
and it just has a little glue on the back. So all I’m going to do is use my hot iron,
put that along The edge of the board
and just press that down into the plywood. And I’ll do that
along the length of the shelf. And then as that dries,
I can come back and trim That with either a chisel
or even just a little razor blade. Then I can give it a sanding on the edges
and it looks like solid wood. SH back in the Kitchen and I put a couple coats of Amber
Polyurethane onto the board And it is almost an exact match
now to the original. So I’ll just put them in here
and see how much extra storage we have. All right, I move down these clips. Here’s the original one. I’m just using these little shelf clips
that have for another project. We’ll put in the new shelf. There we go. Now,
the fit worked out perfectly. My tallest containers just fit in there. Plus, of course, the bins. Now we’ve got a whole other shelf on top. And it is awesome
because we’ve got nothing But storage now. And for the next project,
this was probably at The most wasted space of all, and that is
where our pots and pans are held. By the way,
I did do this pot Land holder that was in a previous kitchen
storage video, And since then
we’ve paint our cabinets white. But the Canada has not fallen off like
everybody in the comments said it would. The extra weight. It’s fine. It’s been three years, But I do have a pull out tray under here
and there’s a little shelf up here. If you want to get anything from the back,
you’ve got to really get in there. The left Oh that it. Yeah I about it. I’ve shown how to make some of these
pull out trays in my previous videos, But today we’re going to make a super
simple little add on to this pull out Tray that’s going to give us access To those items in the back
and add a little bit more storage. I brought the tray out to the shop
as well as our largest pot That goes in that area and the largest lid
that goes along with it. So as I make the shelf here,
I want to make sure that that shelf Is high enough to clear the pot
and then I can have the lids on top. So I’m just going to take
a few measurements And for the depth, I’m going to just take
the measurement of the top of the lid. I can grab some half inch plywood
and start cutting the parts And the assembly is going to
go together really fast and I cut the sides here on the Table, saw for the shelf, but I want that
fit to be really nice in between here. So instead of measuring it
and having the undersized plywood, I’m Just going to stack up my piece of wood
and make a mark where it overlaps. And that way I don’t have to worry about The undersized plywood
or getting the wrong measurement. See how the fit is. Just put my sides in here, Nina. Third arm. Okay, Brad, this is ridiculous. All right, now see how the fit is,
All right? Now, this is the body,
and now we just need to get the shelves. And so I’m going to cut to shelves, And that’s going to double our shelf space
in the back there. And I’ll make them
about an inch shorter than the back. But one thing I do want to change is
I want to knock off this sharp corner Because don’t want that hitting anybody
as they’re pulling it out. So use this roll of blue tape
and trace out the radius there And then we’ll cut that out
and have a nice smooth transition. So make the cut. I’m going to just be using the jigsaw
in order To make sure that we don’t get tear out
because jigsaws can tear out a lot On the top. So I put in this specialty
blade from Diablo. This is their 14 to 4 inch ultrafine
finish blade And it actually has teeth going in
both directions. So that helps prevent
tear out on the bottom as well as the top. I got these from Home Depot
who is the sponsor of today’s video And the cut quality on both side
is really nice and no tear out at all. I’ll have links to homedepot.com
where you can get these blades And I’ll talk about
some other double products I’m using along the way
for the rest of the project And we Everything is edge, banded
and ready for assembly now. And it was a little tricky
going around the corners here, But I just took my time and ironed it on
and it actually turned out really nice. I’m going to go ahead and put these
together and I’m just going to go simple. I was going to use some pocket holes,
but with the half inch material, That’s really difficult. So I’m just going to go with some good
old 18 gauge me nails And of course some glue. Well, luckily that blowouts on the back And I’m just going to lay
this down on its face so the glue can dry. I’m going to go ahead and fill all the
little nail holes with some wood putty.
Now, once the glue and putty is dry,
I can put some finish off. This is all dried up. And I went ahead and put a couple coats
of polyurethane on there for protection. And then after I did that,
I drilled in these shell pin holes there. If you put the finish on first,
it’ll help prevent tear out When you’re drilling those. Now, we can just put that in. And the nice thing about adjustable
shelf pins is you can drill them, Set it in place, And then never adjust them again,
because that’s what I always seem to do. All right. The fit is great. So I’m going to go ahead
and take this inside. We’ll put it in there, get it, load it up
and see how much extra storage we got And get the slide down tray back in there. Now I can put the insert in And I did
make this out of half inch material So it would be lighter because three
quarter inch would be much more heavy. Let’s push it back in there And I
could drive some screws in the bottom, But I’m just gonna let it sit there,
see how it fits Back. I got it, installed it all loaded up. And this is going to
give us a lot more options here. Check this out. Before I had to move these balls
to get to these pans. But now I can access them all at one time. And also I’ve got extra storage here. These fit perfectly. I can even add a few more things up top. If you didn’t want to hang
your pot lids on your doors, You could always use this for pot
led storage as well and even add maybe Another shelf in there to hold more them
in a tight space for the next project. I’m attacking this junk drawer we have
and it’s basically like a little office Supply store in here.
We’ve got the pins, the pins, All the markers, the scissors,
the tape, and who knows what else. Excuse me. I believe you have my stapler,
but I can never find what I need Because it’s all jumbled together. So I want to make some sort of fighters In here and make it double decker
so that we can take advantage of that Top layer and have a place for everything
and everything in this place, Just like a happy engineer wants it. You know, as I change to the black version
of our Maker Mountains t shirts, These shirts are available On our website as well as plans
for a lot of the things we make. It’s A great way to support the channel fixers
build that dot com, go check it out. Now there are plenty of store
bought dividers that you can get, But obviously we want to have it
exactly how we want it. And so that’s why we’re going to make it
ourselves, even if it costs twice as much. So I’ve got these little trays in here
which are not working great for us, And I think the easiest way to figure out
the layout is just to take some tape And start kind of playing around with it
and grab some The items and see how they fit. I lined up some spots here With a large area for pencils and pens
and then the scissors as well. So I’m going to use this quarter Inch poplar board
is going to rip this down To four different strips
over on the table saw. And then we’ll talk about how
the base is going to go together. And I got my four parts strip down
and they’ve got a nice smooth Finish on them
because I am using a 92 Diablo Blade. It’s the ultimate polished finish blade. I have a link down below to that. Now the tricky part about building a grid Like this is how to connect everything
and in what order do you do it? So I think the way that I’m going to do
is I’m going to use Dados And that is just a little notch
in the wood to register the next piece in.
So I’ll start by cutting those outer
frame pieces on the door And I’ll use the door for reference
instead of measuring It just so I can get that perfect fit
and not screw it up. And I’ll be doing all those cuts
on the dinosaur. And I do have the Diablo 12
inch hunter tooth ultra polished finish, Which is basically the companion
to that table saw blade. And this will give us Nice clean finished ends
that will fit in those dados perfectly And put the parts in and they’re fitting. Great. Now what I need to do is start lining out
where these dinos are going to go. And then I can go over and cut them
because what we have to do Is cut them in pairs so that those dados
are going to be at the exact Same spot Got laid out. And here’s how it’s going to look
with the little dados lining up And I can just cut the little pieces
to go in between there. But what I’m going to do first
is go ahead and take these middle ones out And just glue up the outer corners first. And you could also do rabbits
and do different things on the side. But I think glue is going
to hold it in just fine. You don’t need much glue here. Just a little down, will do you While waiting for it to dry. I’m going to go ahead
and cut some of these dividers to size And I’ll cut those first two sections
and then I’ll wait on the last one Until we put it in there
and I’ll cut it to fit. All right,
I’ll let this drive for about a half hour To Little Mountain Dew break,
and now it is time to put these in. I’m just going to friction
fit these with no glue Because I think it’s
going to stay together fine. And I have a fear of commitment. And if I want to change this around,
I can. All right,
So I’m just going to Snap these guys in here, and some of these
fits are going to be tighter than Others just because of wood. All right. Now, all I
need to do is take this little measurement Right here for this last piece,
make the cut, and we’ll be done With the bottom right, see How that fits. All right.
I’m going to bring over the drawer. Let’s make sure this band ball
is still going to fit. And it doesn’t at all.
And I’m just kidding. That is almost exactly how I laid it out. But, you know,
I think this is going to be perfect. Now, you can just stop here
and you can make this higher And have as many little dividers
as you want. But we’re going to go one step further
and take advantage of that top air gap So that we can get double the storage
or at least just more organization. And instead of boring you guys,
I already made it. And it looked a little
something like this. And the only difference is, is that now
we’re going to have a bottom on this one So that it can slide
and obviously everything can stay into it. So I turn it upside down. I’m just going to put a little bit of glue
around the edges and then glue it on. And I’m not going to use any fasteners
because I don’t want to risk them firing Out the sides. Now I Can take
the bottom and just put it on there. And these one, two, three blocks for
my six tools under $20 are going To be great weights to just hold it down,
let it dry. Actually it was not have enough
and I’ll just use some paint cans And that should do the trick
I think will be great for that one corner. I got the tray sanding and finished up.
It’s looking great. Now I’m going to take all this inside And to two by four
I’ll show you why and see how it all fits.
And here’s the trick to make sure
everything doesn’t slide around. I’m going to grab the base
and I’m going to put it in here, And now I’m going to slide it
all the way to the front. And with that two by four in the back,
it’s going to Keep this bottom tray from sliding back
when the door is open and closed. All right. This turned out really nice.
Check it out. I have my little pencils, my pens,
all my sharpies and different markers, And everything is separated
so I can find them easily. And it is just a great way to take
advantage of unused space in your drawers. I don’t have any
unused space in my drawers, You know what I mean? If you want,
see some more kitchen storage videos. I got to play this cued up for you
right there. And if you like what you’re seeing,
go ahead and consider subscribing a big Thank you to those folks who have been
joining the FTB Builders Club. And until next time, guys
get out there and build something awesome.