DIY cardboard shelves
When it comes to the material for the manufacture of furniture, they will remember anything, from wood and MDF to steel and rattan. However, hardly anyone would think of cardboard. Meanwhile, even a novice home craftsman can easily make useful and fairly durable homemade products out of it: shelves from boxes, a bookcase or a rack.
Is it possible to make furniture out of cardboard
You can make furniture out of cardboard. But not all of them. Thick packaging cardboard is suitable, from which boxes are made for TVs, refrigerators, countertops, prefabricated cabinets and other large household appliances and furniture. Thinner material can either be glued in several layers, or reinforced with stiffening ribs from strips of cardboard folded in an accordion.
The most suitable packaging corrugated board for our purposes is a sheet material consisting of five layers: three parallel sheets of ordinary cardboard, between which two corrugated sheets are glued with starch glue.
Pros and cons of cardboard shelves
As with products made from any material, cardboard shelves have advantages and disadvantages. Let's start with the pros:
- Individual design, limited only by your imagination. Whatever bookcase you make, no one else has exactly the same.
- Saving. Minimum investment.
- Ease of disassembly, assembly and transportation (especially when fastened not with glue, but with plastic clips).
- Environmental friendliness, safety for health. The material does not contain toxic substances, does not cause allergies.
And, of course, the main plus is the satisfaction of doing it yourself. Not a single item bought in a store will give you so many positive emotions.
There are also disadvantages:
- Insufficient fire resistance. Keep away from heaters, heating pipes and open flames!
- Susceptibility to moisture. Furniture made of cardboard boxes cannot be placed in the garden, on the open veranda, in the bathroom and in the kitchen.
- Lower strength than more traditional materials.
Important! Cardboard structures are afraid of water and high temperatures. It is highly not recommended to place them in places with high humidity and near heating appliances and open flames.
How to make a cardboard rack with your own hands
We will conduct a master class on making cardboard shelves with our own hands.
Necessary materials and tools
From the tool you only need a clerical knife or jigsaw, a glue gun, a simple pencil, a tape measure, a plastic or wooden ruler.
Materials (part optional):
- Cardboard, thick wrapping paper, tracing paper.
- Moment glue, adhesive tape.
- Plastic clamps.
- Emery for grinding joints and cuts.
You can speed up the drying of glued structural elements using an ordinary household hair dryer.
Instructions for creating a rack
Let's make the simplest shelving from the same type of cardboard boxes. We don't even need a sketch and drawing. No need to measure and cut grooves. We already have ready-made elements of the storage system.
Algorithm of actions:
- Step 1. We take boxes of the same type.
It should be understood that the thicker the material, the stronger the furniture will be. - Step 2. Cut off the lids with scissors.
- Step 3. We connect the boxes to each other. For fastening, you can use glue, tape, plastic clips.
- Step 4. The lightweight and mobile storage system is ready.
It is necessary to decide in advance on the design and construction of the shelf made of cardboard, it can have a classic shape, be in the form of a rack or any figure. We complicate the design a little.
- Step 5. We collect and fasten the smaller boxes. We cut a rectangular hole in front of each box.
The dimensions of the desired shelf, the amount of materials depends on personal wishes. - Step 6. We get a few more cute drawers for storing shirts, towels and all kinds of small things.
- Step 7. And if we make (or pick up) boxes in such a way that four pieces freely fit into one compartment of the bookcase we made earlier, then we will supplement the new storage system with drawers. For convenience, they can be signed. It will be easier to look for where what lies.
Level the surface with putty, flatten the corners and hide all other flaws. It will take a day for the shelves to dry completely. - Step 8. So we made the simplest cardboard bookcase with our own hands.
Part of the shelves can be omitted with drawers. We will add larger items here.
The ends can be pasted over with wrapping paper or tracing paper, and then varnish can be applied to all structural elements. Even old newspapers and pages of glossy magazines can become the basis for LKP. A good decor option is vinyl film for furniture.
How to reliably strengthen the structure
We made a rack of boxes with our own hands, but will it be strong and reliable enough? You can strengthen the structure in different ways. For example:
- Make the walls double by gluing two or three sheets of thick cardboard.
- Reinforce the walls with reinforcing ribs from folded cardboard strips.
- Make a lattice structure from lamellas and attach it to the back of the rack.
More complex designs can be made of cardboard, with curly elements, thematic decor and accessories. In most cases, you will have to draw a sketch and drawing, take measurements and think over each stage of making furniture with your own hands.
Video: do-it-yourself cardboard rack
50 design options for cardboard shelves and racks
