One of the items on the to do list for a long time now was to increase the storage in our boys wardrobe. The purpose, to accommodate all the games remote control cars and other things they have laying around the room. Also being boys they don’t have a lot of use for hanging space given their clothes consist mainly of shorts, T-shirts and jerseys which are usually thrown into the nearest draw.
The existing wardrobe had approximately 110.5cm width and 194cm in height allocated to hanging space. This was almost half the wardrobe that in our case was wasted space.
Always looking for a way to minimise work, my initial plan was to look on eBay for either a white bookshelf or linen closet to match the space I required. This approx. ended up failing in this instance as all the cheap ones, less that $100 were the wrong dimensions. There were several that would fit into the space but out of the price range at $180-250.
On Saturday morning I finally was told to get serious about fixing the problem and noticing that the rest of the wardrobe insert was white melamine, After a chat with renovation wife a simple idea came to mind that made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it earlier.
I remembered that the local hardware sold melamine in standard widths and lengths. They additionally provided a cutting service. Melamine can be difficult to cut with standard DIY tools as it tends to easily chip on the edges.
Armed with the exact measurements I went down to the hardware and asked the assistance to cut a centre divider at 194cm as well as 6 shelves at 54.5cm which was exactly half the width less 1.5cm for the centre divider. I additionally bought a few short dowels, 6 L shaped brackets and some standard shelving plugs. Total cost $82.
The build process was quite simple as well the first step was to insert the vertical centre divider and bottom shelves as these would provide the strength in the new section.
This was achieved by drilling 2 holes in the existing left side wall and in the same location on the side of the first shelf. I then inserted and glued the small dowels into the hole and put the first shelf into position. Ensuring the shelf was level I then screwed through the vertical divider to hold the first shelf in place. I then repeated the process for the shelf on the right side of the unit.
With the bottom shelf in place and screwed together I then made sure the divider was perpendicular to the top shelf and screwed through the top to hold the divider in place.
The remaining shelves were inserted using the following steps.
- Measure in 5cm from both back and front and draw a line top to bottom on each side of the new cupboard.
- Divide the space into the number of shelves you have, in our case 194cm divided by 4 shelves.
- Measure down and mark this distance on each side.
- Drill a small hole on each of the marks
- Insert the shelf plugs in each hole. Should be four per shelf
- Rest the shelves on the plugs
Job done. This took about 1 hour to complete.
