How to Add Some Much Needed Space to Your Cabinets

Posted on August 6th, 2010 by Alejo Tenutta

Ah, your local moving company has finished moving you to your new residence, but wait, you realize you’ve purchased new furniture and notice that your cabinets don’t have enough space for your belongings. No need to stress, because adding a few additional shelves is extremely easy.

The first thing you need to do is grab some measuring tape and a notebook. Make sure you properly measure the dimensions inside the cabinet where you’ll be locating your shelves. Once you’ve completed that, it’s time to scour through the yellow pages and find a local specialty supply store that carries furniture and construction products. These stores usually stock anything from intricate hinges to heavy-duty construction products. The beauty of stores like these is that you can find pre-finished and pre-cut shelves, and all you would have to do is make some simple cuts on a miter saw.

If a sharp blade slicing through wood is a bit intimidating, then simply find a local furniture shop and ask them to cut it for you, they only charge a few bucks for their services. Remember that if the specialty store doesn’t carry any shelves with finish that matches your cabinet, simply purchase unfinished pieces and some stain that you can easily apply yourself. They usually offer to do custom staining as well, just make sure to bring a cabinet door for them to match.

Once you’ve got shelves in hand, it’s time to prepare the cabinet. Before you leave the specialty store, make sure to pick up some shelf pins, those are the small pieces that will support your shelves. Now prepare your drill with the correct bit, which means simply checking that the thickness of the bit is the same as the shelf pin. Now you will need templates, the amount of templates you need, will depend on how many shelves you’re locating.

Your templates must be the correct height, but how will you know? Here’s an example, if your cabinet has 3’ of shelf space and you want 2 shelves, with each shelf being ¾” thick plywood, then the three sections have to have 11 ½” of space in between them. So simply prepare your templates, making one, 11 ½” tall, and the other, 23 ¾” tall. Pre-drill some holes into the top of the templates so that you get exact measurements. Also remember that your templates can be made of any scrap piece of wood.

Now comes the easy part, which is drilling the holes into the cabinet. Remember that the holes can’t go any deeper than the shelf pin would go in, otherwise the pin will be too loose. Drill two holes on each side of the cabinet, giving each shelf four pins of support. Grab a hammer and make sure that the pins enter all the way, clean up, and slide your shelves in. You’re officially done!

Related Articles:

1. Do It Yourself Movers: How to Load Your Cabinets Onto Your Pick-Up Truck
2. A “How To” on Securing Your Furniture to the Wall
3. Be Creative: Build an Office Using Your Closet Space

Tags: adding, cabinets, fixing

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 9:52 am and is filed under Moving Experts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.