I don’t know about you, but there’s one thing that drives me crazy when I’m cooking: not being able to find instantly what I need. Spices, salt, or sugar, they are all on the same shelf, and they are always hard to spot in a second.

I needed a good storage idea to end all this mess, and I found it. It was inspired by a video that I saw on Facebook, and it took me a couple of hours (drying included) to build it on my own!

So here it is, the U-shaped shelf that suddenly improved my storage space and allowed me to display all my spices!  Keep reading to see how to build yours!

As I’ve already told you, I had a situation, and it looked like this:

Organizing doesn’t solve much when your space is way too small compared to your needs. There isn’t much space to waste in my kitchen, and displaying all the spices on the counter was out of question because of the dust coming from outside.

What You Need for This Project

Here are the materials and tools you need to develop this project:

• one wooden plank 5-in width and 0.7-in thick
• 6 x 3/8” wooden dowels
• 6 metallic dowels 1.6-in long
• glue and white paint
• sanding paper
• hammer drill
• hammer

How to Prepare the Pieces

Basically, you start with a wooden plank that is 5-in width and 0.7-in thick. As for the length and the width, you’ll calculate them based of the measures of the drawer you’re going to improve. Measure the shelf you already have because this is where you’re going to start from.

I’ve used a 6.5-ft wood plank to build a 22-in long x 19-in wide U-shaped shelf, and it was 1.5-in shorter than the drawer I put it in, so I could easily handle it during installation.

Your U-shaped shelf is made out of three pieces, and two of them are equals. The laterals will have the same length as the depth of your drawer minus one inch. Measure the plank, cut the two pieces and leave them aside.

The length of the third piece will be equal to the width of your drawer minus sum the width of the laterals, minus 1.5-in. Do the math, measure the length and cut off another piece of the plank.

Now you have the three pieces of your U-shaped rack!  Use the sanding paper to polish the end of each piece of wood plank, to make it look neat.

Make a test to see how the three pieces will be assembled together, as I did in the third picture above. Test to see if you have the right size of the drill: make a hole in another piece of wood and try to sneak in one of the dowels (as displayed in the fourth picture).

How to Assemble the Rack

Once you have all the pieces ready, put them together and mark each joint with a number or letter, so you would easily recognize them. Add a mark on your drill so you would know how deep to drill for the dowels, as you see in the second picture. Drill the holes on one edge of the plank, pour a bit of glue and introduce the dowels. Gently use the hammer to push them inside by half of their length.

Before drilling on the other side of the plank, you need to make sure that the holes will be symmetrical, otherwise you rack will twist and break easily. Use this trick:  drop a bit of colored paint on top of your dowels, then lay the pieces against a wall, and push the pieces one against another as if you would already assemble it. The paint will leave marks on the other edge of the plank, and these are exactly the spots where you should drill holes for the dowels.  Look at the picture below and tell me: can you see how it works?

You only need to repeat what you did a step before: drill, pour a bit of glue in the hole and gently push the dowels in, in order to assemble the rack.

Here Comes the Paint!

I chose a white water based paint for this rack, to make it look like the rest of the drawer. Half an hour later, the paint was dry enough to use it.

My Ikea kitchen already had enough holes to mount the rack in any of the drawers. I only had to choose the height (I recommend 2.7 to 3-in height) and place the metallic dowels to support the U-shaped rack.

Is it nice or what? Because I am really proud of my DIY project!

I can easily see every single container, which helps me a lot during cooking. All I need now is a Lazy Susan in the center for the bottles, don’t I?

I don’t need to evacuate half of the shelf to get something from the corner because everything I need is easy to spot and easy to grab.

What do you think about this project? Would you do something differently? Let me know by adding a comment below!