Quarantine Spice Rack

When we returned to Malaysia, we entered a two-week home quarantine. I had a lot of time on my hands and decided that I was tired of sitting on the kitchen floor to go through my very low cabinet of spices whenever I cooked. I decided to use some of my quarantine time to make a spice cabinet.

Since we were not allowed to leave the house, I had to use supplies I had on hand. This, of course, forced me to choose resourcefulness and creativity over convenience and perfection. 

The following is my “Quarantine Spice Rack in 12 Super Easy (?) Steps”. Don’t be intimidated by my expertise. (I own my own jigsaw and wireless drill, what’s more professional than that?) Just follow these instructions  and…well…who knows what you’ll end up with…

Before You Begin

Scour Pinterest for ideas and tips. When you tire of that, toss Pinterest and branch off on your own. Because surely you can do better than Pinterest.

Pro-tip: It’s best to be confident in your ability or you will never start. In the words of Jase Robertson from Duck Dynasty, “When you don’t know what you're doing, it’s best to do it quickly.”

Supplies:

Wood – Whatever you can find. I happened to have 4X24 inch wooden pieces on hand.

Dowel rods – who knows why, but I happened to have these too.

Screws, paint, measuring tape, jigsaw, drill

Pro-tip: Have these on hand for any mistakes you might make: extra wood, extra dowel rod, scotch tape, 3 or 4 extra days, a brain.

Step one:

Measure your wood and your countertop and draw out (with measurements) your plan. Do this in pencil so you can erase and rewrite repeatedly because you didn’t think it through the first time, or second…or third.

Pro-tip: When you have your picture the way you imagine the awesome final product will be, write out your first steps for when you come back next time (because now it’s time to cook dinner and you were so excited to make the cabinet but now you have to wait until tomorrow). That way you won’t spend the first few minutes trying to remember where you left off.

Step two:

Mark all your wood so you know where to cut for the shelves, and where to place the braces on the frame. 

Pro-tip: When you have marked on the wood and realize you marked in the wrong place, it’s better to erase the whole mark rather than lightly draw a tiny x on the line that no person even with 20/20 vision will ever see, therefore deceiving you into accidentally drilling the hole for the dowel rod in the wrong spot. 

Step three:

All your wood is marked! Get out your drill and start cutting along the marked lines. 

Pro-tip: The brilliance of “Step two” is that there is no need to think about it in Step three. Just cut!

Step four:

Figure out which pieces you cut that were not actually marked for cutting but simply marked so you’d know where to hang the shelves. 

Look for additional wood lying around the house and recut the pieces that you have destroyed by following the Pro-tip in Step three.

Pro-tip: Be sure to  repack your drill, work table, and all tools as soon as you have finished because you know you won’t need them again because you got it right the first time and definitely won’t have to redo anything.

Step five:

Drag everything back out because you cleaned it all up too soon and you are on Day 4 of your “done in two hours” project.

Now it’s time to glue the braces to the frame. (oh yeah, I forgot to add Wood Glue to the list of supplies. Go ahead and pencil that one in yourself, I don’t feel like scrolling back up to the top.)

Basically, you just glue little wood pieces to the two frame sides with wood glue. If you have clamps, use those to hold the pieces together until they dry. If you don’t: stack, oh I don’t know, say a cast iron dutch oven or jars of sea glass on top to hold them down.

Pro-tip: I like to set my work station up in and around my kitchen. Nothing like sawdust and wood glue fumes mixed in with the smells of dinner cooking. You can see in the picture below how a cordless drill and sandpaper pair nicely with a glass of water and a pan of pumpkin bread.

Step six:

Before attaching all the pieces to make the frame and the shelves, drill holes for the dowel rods. In my case, I needed to drill 2 hole sizes because I had two sizes of dowel rods. Again, no need to think about this since you’ve already marked the spots to drill. Pack your drill away because you won’t need it again.

Pro-tip: Unpack your drill after you test out the dowel rods and realize you marked the spot wrong and now have a giant hole just under where your dowel rod needs to be. 

Step seven:

Find the left over bits of the unused dowel rod to cut a little “plug” to stick in the accident hole. Hope that paint will cover the whole mess up.

Also cut off a couple of inch-long pieces of dowel after you realize that you cut the dowel rods too short and now they won’t even go across the shelf into the holes you just drilled.

Wood glue the extra inch of dowel rod to the end of each rod and hope the glue holds.

Pro-tip: Don’t be jealous. Not everyone can have the kind of work station I have. The picture below is the table where I mount my jigsaw upside down. “Not steady” you say? Well, probably not, but these plastic stools are way safer than the “steady” gas bottles over there to the left that I could be using. Seth Godin says, “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” Not saying that relates here. I just thought I should add a quote.

Step eight:

If you want to add screws to secure the braces, you can do that. I did because I wasn’t sure how well the glue would hold and how heavy the spices would be. Plus, I got to use my cordless drill and that was fun.

Pro-tip: Even though you want to save time and just put the screws in on the kitchen table, it’s best to go ahead and just do it out on your work bench. This is especially important if your screws are just a tiny bit longer than the wood you are working on. I’m just afraid you’ll screw holes into your kitchen table. I’m not saying I did, I just don’t want YOU to make that mistake.

Step nine:

Glue the top and bottom shelf to the braces. Use clamps if you have them. I actually did find my clamps and did this, but you know, I’m so professional. Not everyone has clamps, so don’t feel bad if you don’t. Your extra shelves should now slide right in! But don’t slide them in for good yet. We have another step to go.

Pro-tip: For the dowel that was already too short to begin with and is smaller in size, just scotch tape some broken toothpicks to the end. 

Step ten:

Paint! Choose whatever color you want. I had black acrylic on hand and therefore enjoyed the unusual circumstance of actually wanting the color I already had as my first choice. Sweet! Paint the frame, shelves, dowel rods.

Pro-tip: When painting items black, it’s better not to work on a table cloth that you last used (and didn’t clean up) for a project involving white plaster of Paris. Seriously, it’s worth the time to clean up the mess first. Why didn’t you clean it up way back then when you were doing that project anyway? Sheesh.

Also, it’s good to stuff some paint into the dowel rod holes because, why not? A smaller paint brush is good for this.

Step eleven:

Assemble and place your spice rack! Realize if you had measured the countertop better, you’d have hung the top shelf a fraction of a centimeter higher to cover the socket on the wall but now it bumps right against it so you just have to deal with it.

Pro-tip: When attempting to place your dowel rods into the holes that have now somehow expanded during the painting session (see pro-tip of Step Ten), do not become discouraged. Simply unpack the drill that you already packed away because you were certain you didn’t need it anymore. Re-drill the holes, negating all the meticulous hole-painting of previous step.

Step twelve:

Your done!  And it only took a week! You can hang a curtain over the front if you are concerned about the spices getting bleached out by the sun. I was, so I hung a cute tea towel that my mother-in-law gave me and I think it looks quite nice.

Pro-tip: Here you may realize that you didn’t paint the toothpicks that you scotch-taped to the end of your chewed-on dowel rod and you have already packed away all the paint and you are too tired to get it all out again. Just color the toothpicks with a Sharpie. You can also use the Sharpie to touch up any parts that you missed in the painting phase. By now you’ve been at it for a week and are ready to be done already. So you used a sharpie instead of paint. Who cares?

And that, my friends, is how you can make this quick and easy spice rack!