Cubes

I was sick of having all my stuff lying around and Chloe was getting to the age where she was pulling anything down that was at floor level, which for us was pretty much everything. The trouble was that we were going to be moving in the next year and I didn't want to buy a large piece of furniture that might not fit in a different space. I decided that the solution for me was to make a number of cubes that I could rearrange as our needs changed.

I started with 9mm MDF which my wonderful dad helped me to cut into lots of pieces. Each cube was going to be 350mm x 350mm and 400mm deep. I also wanted to put backs on some of them so that when they were stacked it would give a checkerboard effect, and also give some stability. I also wanted to have 2 boxes with a shelf in the middle for all our CDs. This meant that for each box there were 2 pieces that measured 350mm x 400mm for the top and bottom and 2 pieces that measured 332mm x 400mm for the sides. These had to be a bit smaller as, by the time they were butted against the top and bottom, the thickness of those pieces would add up to 350mm. The back pieces were 350 x 350. The shelves were cut to the same size as the sides.

Next step was putting the boxes together. My dad showed me how to make a template so that all of the pieces would have holes drilled in the same place. We drilled first and then nailed them together using panel pins.

I'm not going to lie, the next bit took ages. I had to sand, undercoat and then 2 topcoats for each box. My original plan was to end up with a 'unit' 3 boxes wide and 5 boxes high. We got all the boxes made up but so far I have only finished 9 boxes in total. The others will get done sometime. I just need to get DH to take Chloe for a day so I can put in a solid effort.

This is just 6 of the boxes, including the 2 with shelves. You can see the red backs behind them, which matches the colour we have on one wall in our living area. The next 3 got added to the bottom and house Chloe's toys, perfect height for grabbing them.