Tag Archive | organization

Build some under the sink storage

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This post was originally a guest post for Brittany over at Pretty Handy Girl a little over two weeks ago. I so appreciate that she featured me over there! If you didn’t catch it then, here is the Pink Toe version

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Based on today’s post, I’m going to predict that 2012 is going to involve some embarrassing photos. Embarrassing to me specifically. But the “after” results are so worth the embarrassment that I’m going to show you some of the messy areas of our my house. That cannot read “our” because no part of My Man is messy. Been with him 18 years and the man hasn’t made a mess yet. Me? I’m the fertility goddess for messes—they breed all around me. So I decided to tackle one mess at a time in 2012 and my latest project is organizing under the sink in the master bath.

I mean look at this (if you are male and uncomfortable looking at feminine products, you can just skip on ahead here…if you can even find it in this mess. This photo could be a page in an I Spy book).

Ack! I swear it looks worse in the picture! You can now understand that when I saw this on Pinterest I got pretty excited.

source: Pregnant…with power tools

Actually I got a LOT excited…dollar store bins! Scrap wood! Cheap and easy DIY—what’s not to love??

So I went off and I built some stuff and now it looks like so:

AAAHHH! I love it so much now!

First thing you need to do is go get yourself some bins. This project cost me $4 because all I had to buy were the bins and I got 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree. You need to know also that bins vary in quality and usability for this project. Look for rigid bins with side edges that are uniform with no obstructions like these: Read More…

February 5, 2012

How to Build a Closet Organizer {The Reveal!}

Woohoo the reveal! I love. love. love this closet organizer. I couldn’t be happier with it. More importantly Pip is happy with it and she is excited that she can find all her stuff in there now!

The viking hat got a place of honor

Dress up jewelry for now!

What do you think? Was it worth the effort? Got a spot for one in your house? I want to do ALL the closets in our house now!

How to Build a Closet Organizer {Post 5} Drawer Fronts

Normally my mantra during a build is “Perfect is the enemy of done” because I tend to be a perfectionist about things. Well this closet organizer is done and it sure isn’t perfect. Had this been anywhere but a closet, the drawer fronts would have been redone. But my new and improved mantra for this build was “It’s going into a closet for gosh sakes.” I had to repeat that a lot…

I have had a difficult time in the past assembling framed doors and drawer fronts because you have to cut out a rabbet in the back of the frame to accept the middle piece of 1/4″ plywood. The first time I built some drawer fronts I used 1/2″ plywood with 1/4″ hobby boards glued to the front because I didn’t know how to use a router to make the rabbet. The second time I made some framed doors, I did use a router but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the rails and stiles, so I used mitered corners. This time I had read how Sandra does it at Sawdust and Paperscraps and decided to give it a go.

I used a router to rabbet out a 1/4″ on the entire edge of my 1×2 stiles and the whole length of the rails, but leaving 3/4″ on each end (if you cut it the entire way it leaves a gap on the outside of the drawer front).

How to build a closet organizer {post 2}

DIY Closet organizer day 2: Drive to Home Depot, buy the stuff you need, come home, and cut your sheets of plywood. Go to bed.

DIY Closet organizer day 3: In the morning, you limp to the bathroom, holding your back the entire way, wondering what the make of the car was that hit you yesterday, and then remember that you are only sore because you cut up two sheets of plywood on the cold garage floor the day before. Make a vow to start exercising and eating right because you have too many projects to do in this house to be too old for this.

Forget the vow. Breakfast is coffee with caramel macchiato creamer (there’s calcium in that right?). Head to the garage, hoping the concrete floor is warmer than yesterday.

It’s not.

Picture the closet before photo in your head which fires you up to get started on some shelf pin holes!

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I use a peg board guide, which I used on the built-in cabinets in Pip’s room already. Kreg has a new shelf pin hole jig that I tried to find locally to use on this project, but no dice. I used the 13/64 drill bit on these. In the past I have used the exact size bit as the shelf pin, but I have to use a hammer to get the pin into the hole after painting, which is a complete pain.

Then I determine how far I want the drill bit to go into the wood, keeping in mind it has to clear the peg board also. I mark it with tape like so: Read More…

October 7, 2011

in DIY, Miscellaneous DIY, Organization, Project Reveals, Uncategorized, Woodworking
15 Comments

Crates

A little while ago I saw these crates on a blog post by Kit at DIY Diva and I loved them. She made hers from pallets. I did not for a few reasons.

1. I’d have to find some pallets
2. I’d have to take apart said pallets.
3. Pallets scare me. I’m pretty sure that most of them are saturated in all sorts of things to keep the wood from rotting, none of which I want inside or to breathe while I’m cutting, sanding,etc. Read the comments in the DIY Diva post for safety measures you can take.

So I went to Lowes to the furring strip department and searched for really-beat-up-but-straight-as-I-could-find boards. Really beat up? Easy. Straight as I could find? Not so much. I could find furring strips for the 1x3s and 1x4s, but the 1x2s were impossible, so I used Top Choice for those.

6—1x3x8 furring strips

3—1x4x8 furring strips

1—1x2x8 and 1—1x2x6 Top Choice boards (they only had a few at 8’—there was enough wood for 3 with these figures)

For a grand total of $21.24. Much, much, much cheaper than the large baskets I was eyeballing at Target 2 weeks ago. I could have spent $50-$60 dollars on 3 baskets! Sheesh. Here’s my version:

For the ends cut: Read More…

August 31, 2011

Organizing {junk drawer}

Ahh, the junk drawer. The bane of my existence. Always a mess with nary a solution to be found. Til now. Well, actually I found the solution last year. But that’s even better because I found a solution that has worked for a whole year!

I don’t have any before shots because it was during my pre-blogging days that I came up with this. I started out shopping for drawer organizers and was blown away by what it was going to cost me for plastic pencil bins and the like. And that was at Walmart! I even had them in my cart, thinking that the money would be worth it, but ended up putting them back and leaving empty handed. They might have segmented the drawer, but it still didn’t feel like it was customized for what I specifically needed. Which meant the solution wouldn’t end up working and it would eventually be a mess again.

Then I got to thinking that I had a lot of fruit roll up, granola bar, and cake boxes in the pantry that might work. For free. And then the angels started singing (they do that when I hit upon a great solution or idea–doesn’t happen often enough, I tell ya). Read More…

August 30, 2011

in Organization, Uncategorized
1 Comment

Organizing {jewelry drawer}

I am in the middle of an organizing frenzy! And generally my organizing looks like a frenzied event when I am done. It is not unusual for the room to look worse after I start the organizing because I want it to be perfect when I am done. Perfectly matched containers. Perfectly lined up. Everything in its place. Neat. Tidy.

That all takes time! And I get ~~distracted~~ interrupted easily. You know life? It always gets in my way. And I abandon the attempt before it’s complete.

But occasionally I am successful. Yesterday I was in Dollar Tree trying to find cheapo candles for another project when I ran across some of these