Friday, April 05, 2013

Recycling IKEA cardboard

I had to switch rooms last week: That's good if you go to a bigger place, the problem was that I moved to a room three times smaller than the previous one. The thing was that there wasn't enough place for my paints and I needed a very fast solution so I could start to work again. So no room, no money, no time... but a lot of IKEA cardboard from some furniture. I decided to try to make some paint racks in a very fast and cheap way, and as you can see in the pictures I think I got it. The first one took me more time than I had planned because of all the measurements and such but with the other ones I only spent one or one and a half hours each. There are very nice commercial paint racks on the market but I hadn't got any time to wait for delivery, and I couldn't justify spending £200 on them.

Costs? Cardboard for "free" and 3 hot-glue sticks per paint rack. So if you have a bit of time and some raw materials you can do these.

I´m posting some WIP pictures and the final result.

EDITED: I forgot to post a picture showing the rear view. Please note that there are five vertical supports, that way the racks are strong. Another thing is that the cardboard corrugation should be vertical in the supports – that will make a sturdier structure. I think three supports would work well but I have preferred to use five because it holds 100 paint pots and that’s a considerable weight.
 




12 comments:

TamsinP said...

Nicely done. One suggestion for improvement might be to put end pieces on to provide retaining lips at the end of each shelf.

EinarOlafson said...

Thanks TamsinP, that's a very good idea. I started by adding end pieces (you can see them in the first row) but I was a bit tired after five paint racks :S :D. I´ll add them sometime during the weekend.

Cheers.

Stig of the Dump said...

Great idea! I may have to borrow that one :)

Steve

Laffe said...

Genious!

Ray Rousell said...

Very clever!!

TamsinP said...

Yup - I see it now on the Vallejo rack :)

Michael Awdry said...

Fabulous solution.

Sire Godefroy said...

Paint racks haven't been on my list so far, mainly due to cost. Seeing yours opens up some possibilities. Thanks for that!

Cheers, SG
www.mountainsoflead.com

EinarOlafson said...

Thanks!!

Sire Godefroy: I made these very fast, not bothering much about the look, and they are working very well (at the moment at least). Commercial paint-racks are ok if you have the money and you don’t want to spend time cutting and glueing, but with a sharp blade, a metallic ruler (could be plastic but you can damage it) and a hot-glue gun it’s very fast to do. If you cut a template with the support shape that will save you a lot more time.

Cheers.

Jay said...

Very nicely constructed, Sir.

Dalauppror said...

Greate work Andres !

As a Swede i get extra glad that you support IKEA;)

Best regards Michael

EinarOlafson said...

Thanks!! I hope you find this useful. If any of you make one, please, share some images!!

Dalauppror: Thanks!! I feel terribly guilty when I see all that cardboard going into the bin, so I´m always thinking how to make the most of it. Most of the time I use it to make boxes and packages to send miniatures. And for those who have children it could be a good source of raw material for making some crafts, castles, forts, rockets, time machines, robots...

Cheers.