Upcycling a small shelf into an art pen rack

Many who know me as an artist, writer and Intuitive are often astonished at my level of organisation. Admitedly it borders on the fanatical at times, but I simply work so much better when I know where everything is. Over the last several months I have acquired an alarming number of pens, pencils, brush and felt pens etc.. and they were beginning to take over every available surface in the art room. With a tiny space to work in, another solution had to be found.

It all started innocently enough... I discovered these wonderful bamboo pencil holders at the local dollar store and brought a couple home with me...

I unearthed a pine shelving unit that had served as a spice rack in one incarnation, and a mug rack in another. I had been eyeing it up this time round as a rack for art supplies...

Then I had a brilliant idea - what if I lay my pen containers down on the shelves and access my pens that way? Tony, my somewhat more practical mate, cautioned that I might want to consider putting a backing on the shelf otherwise the weight of the pens would pull the containers over. Of course I had to test his theory. He was right. Spectacularly.

Back to the drawing board. One idea was to angle the entire unit but I quickly vetoed that due to limited space. What if I could angle the shelves themselves? What if my shelving happened to be put together with screws? It did! So I set about unscrewing the front screw on each shelf so that I could angle them appropriately.

 

We then took ourselves to the lumber yard and found a piece of molding (although any straight piece of wood will do) and cut three lengths using the inside measurement of the shelves. 

Next I nailed the cut lengths onto the back of the shelves. This is definitely one of those times when you want to line up twice and nail once. I didn't. Thankfully I realised my error after the first shelf... You need to be sure that the bottom of the length of wood is nailed to back of the shelf so that you can angle the front of the shelf upwards. Check, then check again.

 

Once the lengths were nailed in place, I was able to test the angle by placing a few containers with various weights and lengths of pens. Once I found the angle I wanted I marked where I needed to drill a new hole. This is a matter of making a rough guess (if there is a mathematical equation to calculate this then please feel free to use it...) Measure approximately where the mark is so that you can line up all the other screws the same way.

I drilled the new hole and then rescrewed the screw into the new postion. Then I simply took the same measurement and did the same with the rest of the screws. I can fill the remaining holes with wood filler.

And here is my new shelf with all my pens on it... Needless to say this will work just as well with glass jars or tin cans.

 Only problem is... I now have room for more supplies...