DIY: Spices shelf

Background

I'm sure that this is a problem that anyone who has a small house will understand. The cupboard that holds all of our fundamental ingredients such as herbs and spices is absolutely crammed full. The problem is a lack of space, but it isn't a lack of volume.

The jars that spices come in are about 10-12 cm tall but there is a great void of space that is unusable. This blog article is about how I came up with a solution to make that volume usable again.

So much lost volume above the spice jars

Solution time

Having a little mosey around my garage I found a piece of 15 mm MDF that I thought would be the perfect size for a shelf.

My initial idea was to screw three batons into the walls of the cupboard but Charlotte refused to allow me to cause 'damage'to the cupboard, so whatever I did would have to be free standing.

I marked up the board to give me the shelf top plus two sides to support it.

Material is marked up, ready to be cut with the jigsaw

To ensure that when I screwed the top to the two sides the address would go into the middle, I marked the width of the support off.

Marking the material thickness

I pre-drilled the holes so that I knew they would cause the screw's to be in the right place.

The holes were pre-drilled before screwing

Finally I assembled the pieces together and jobs done!

Assembled unit

Even though this is one of my simpler projects, I still had that twang of excitement to see how it would turn out. So pulling everything out of the cupboard to get the shelf in and then fill it back up was done eagerly!

The result

Moving those herb and spice jars onto the shelf has made that space that usable and as result has freed up a massive area for other storage (free at the moment).

Jobs' a good 'un!