Make Shelves From Drawers

 Hello Readers. I am always trying to make more storage in the space that I live in. In addition to myself I live with my husband and my kids and we all have "stuff".  Where can we put the stuff? I am pretty much out of floor space so we have to go up and use some of the vertical space. I am talking about shelves today. You can of course buy bookcases and cabinets. But let's do something more creative and free! Let's make some shelves from old dresser drawers.

 Drawers to Shelves!

I found these drawers on the side of the road when I was driving home from the library. There were 5 dusty drawers that a man was putting at the end of his driveway. I stopped and asked if I could have them. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he said yes.

I came home and used a vacuum to get some of the dust off the drawers.

 

I sanded the drawers because I wanted to paint them. The paint will stick better if the finish is sanded.

 

I dusted the drawers to get rid of all the dust I had made when I sanded them. 

 

I removed some of the knobs with a screwdriver. I knew how I wanted to stack my drawers and the knobs would be in my way.

 

I used some white acrylic paint to paint the drawers I was going to use as my shelves.
 

I started painting my shelves. I let the first coat of paint dry over night and I added a second coat of paint the next day.  

 

I wanted my drawers stacked like this so each of the lower drawers needed 1 knob taken off. That way I could stack a drawer on top of the 2 lower drawers. We tested and shook the shelves to make sure they were very balanced and stable. (If you have kids that might climb on shelves, you should to anchor them to the wall. )

 

Kids are wild and they will climb on anything when they are young. When my youngest was a toddler, he would climb things that I never even thought he would try to climb. He is older now but when he was young we anchored all our furniture to the wall. Better safe than sorry. 

 

I used the new shelves to display some of my child's artwork. 

These can be swapped out whenever we want. Displaying them this way won't leave holes in the wall.

 

You can put the drawers into any order and arrangement that works for you and your space.

 

Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself. 

***Year End Update***- These shelves are still full of kid projects and artwork. They are very handy.