Kitchen drawer has been my problem for quiet a while. We never really have a nice kitchen drawer organizer that fits perfectly on my kitchen drawer. The ones we had in Salt Lake City was too short for IKEA's drawer organizer. The one we have now is too long and too wide for it. Even the drawer organizer I bought from Taiwan is too short. In above 'Before' picture, I used both Ikea's drawer organizer and the one I got from Taiwan as well as my small pencil organizer. The mismatch usage works but it wasn't perfect. As you can see, the organizers weren't steady. It moved around whenever I opened or close the drawer. So this weekend I finally decided to make good use of my le-cartonnage skill to make my own kitchen drawer organizer.
 |
| Materials |
The materials for this projects are:
- clean and good shaped cartoon boxes - cut into the size of the final box you wanted
- kraft paper tape
- pencil
- utility knife
- scissors
- used gift card or old debit/credit card
- invisible tape
- cutting pad
- metal ruler (for a guide when cutting the cartoon with utility knife)
Before I started cutting the cartoon and assembling them, I measured the kitchen drawer (width, length, and height). I didn't make any blueprint on how the final layout will be. I tried this before (on an old project in Taiwan) and the final result was not perfectly like my design. The different thickness of the cartoon played a major role why my blueprint didn't work perfectly. So this time I decided to design it along the progress. This was a piece of cake for me for I knew what I wanted: separate boxes for spoons, forks, knives, and the wooden/silicone cooking utensils. The temporary organizer (with Ikea's and Taiwan bought drawer organizer), had also helped me to give the rough layout of the drawer.
Thus, I started from the three boxes for spoons, forks, and knives. These three boxes could be in the same dimension. After I made them, I placed them into the drawer to see how much space left and what could I use the extra space for. It was then I decided to make another long box for spatula, meat muller, and the rice spatula. I also made another two shorter boxes to fill the gap of the first two rows. Then I continued with the rest of the space. The chopsticks box was the addition I decided to make before I created the two top left organizer for smaller utensils and the big box for the cooking utensils. The rest of the space, is designated for wooden/silicone cooking utensils. So, this is how I designed the organizer along the progress.
 |
| One of the boxes |
For each boxes, first I cut the cartoon into the bottom side and two longer walls of the final box dimension. These width of these three part should be the same. The other dimension depends on the depth of the final box desired and the height of the final box. Thus for the box on the right, I will have (1) side with box width x box depth and (2) sides with box width x box height. Then I followed these steps to assembly the sides. Tips: I use the used gift card to stick the kraft tape to the cartoon. The pressure applied through the gift card help preventing bubble or uneven pressure. It also makes the kraft tape stick firmer to the cartoon. You can also use your finger but I found it is easier to use the used gift card.
Repeat for the other side and you will have this:
 |
| Half finished box |
Through my experience making boxes with cartoon, I noticed the thickness of the same cartoon can be varying depends on the pressure applied to the cartoon previously. For that reason, I didn't pre-cut the final 2 sides of the box. Now that the two sides and the bottom side had been assembled, I started with making the rest 2 sides of the box. The picture below showed the steps to finish the box.
After repeating the steps for the last side, the box is finally finished. By now you should notice that often I cut the kraft tape shorter than the edge's length. There was a reason for that. For unknown reason, the kraft tape won't stick nicely to the un-sticky side of kraft tape (maybe it's the wax layer on the un-sticky side that cause it). I had several issue with it on my previous le cartonnage projects. I believe this is also the reason some people like to apply water-all purpose glue like Elmer's to the sticky side before using the kraft tape. For this project, I just re-taped it with invisible type.
Actually, it didn't really matter if I enforced it with invisible tape or not since it will be outside and the other boxes would be placed next to each other. However, I still decided to do so because I didn't want this small corner causing me problem when I rearrange the drawer (although the chance is very low). Anyways, this was how I made my own kitchen drawer organizer using cartoon. You can also use this method to create your own organizer for any drawer.
Have fun making your own drawer organizer. ^_^
Happy DIY-ing,
Sherls
Comments
Post a Comment