Hi everyone. I am erseka’s husband and I help around with some of her projects. If you’ve been following erseka and reading up on her posts, you know very well how much she likes to do her nails.
Naturally, the problem of how to store and organize all her nail polish came up one day. She wanted something that could be mounted on the wall in our bedroom closet.
We did some searching and found the Ikea hack idea with Ribba frame holders but decided not to use them as the small bottles kept sliding and wanting to tumble or even fall.
What we did like though was the idea of multiple small shelves. We also wanted a way to make the small bottles more stable (she uses exclusively the OPI small bottles) so I though of drilling some wide holes into the shelf and inserting some felt pads in them.
What I used to make the shelves:
- drilling machine
- Forstner boring drill for wood
- cabinet keyhole suspension fittings (plastic or metal) – take 2 for each shelf
- felt pads
- as many square wooden dowels as you need (I only bought a long one since it was cheaper and I have an electrical saw)
- 2 pan head screws with anchors for each shelf that you want to make
- different grades of sand paper: coarse, fine, very fine (only if you cut the wood yourself)
Things to consider before buying:
- you need to choose a boring drill that is a bit wider than the base of your nail polish bottles (otherwise they won’t fit)
- after selecting the drill, use it to select an appropriate size for the wood
- make sure that the plastic suspension fitting and the drill are the same size
- the felt pads should either be the same size as the drill or smaller
- take one of your nail polish bottles with you when choosing the wood dowels
Step by step:
- cut the wood into the lengths that you wish – mine were all 50 cm in length
- in order to have perfectly aligned holes, we need to do a bit of preparation:
- on the top part of the wood draw one horizontal line. You will use this to align the edge of your drill to it. Draw it close to the outer edge but leave 3-5 mm distance from it. The reason why I drew the line at the outer edge and not try to measure so that the drill will land in the middle is because we need space between the wall and the bottles
- now we must draw vertical lines so we know where to drill. The distance between these vertical lines is a sum of the following:
- the diameter of your biggest nail polish bottle + 5 mm. That 5 mm is actually the distance between the bottles. If the bottles don’t have a funnel shape but are straight, then you can leave a bit more than 5 mm
- with the new length established from the previous point, calculate how many fit on one shelf and what is the length of the remaining unused space. If you do not have any unused space, substract one nail polish spot
- decide from which side you wish to start drawing the vertical lines
- to calculate where to draw the first line, add the distance in between the bottles that you chose (5 mm in our case) to the unused space and then divide by 2
- draw the next lines using the distance calculated at the first point (diameter of bottle plus space in between)
- drilling the holes for the bottles:
- always align your drill’s edge with both the top line and the vertical line
- when you have the drill set in place, make the hole but not deeper than 7.5 mm
- on the back side of each shelf/rack measure equal distances from the edge for 2 holes where you will place the suspension fittings
- drill holes for the fittings deep enough to fit them perfectly
- insert the fittings. Be careful to align them straight. Once they start going in, it’s quite hard to get them out (that is the point)
- using the sand paper, remove any pencil marks, rough edges and then continue sanding until you get a smooth finish
- after cleaning the wood, place the felt pads inside the holes for the bottles
- using one of the shelves and a construction level, decide where you need to drill the holes. Then measure the position of the next holes at equal distances using the level to make sure you’re going straight
- drill all the holes and insert the anchors and screws but do not tighten them till the end
- alternate tightening the screws with testing the shelf on the wall until you feel that it is fixed well enough
- take a picture and show it to us in the comments!
Note: you do not need to stay in the position that I was sitting in the picture above. That was just me trying to make my wife laugh.