Remodelling an old broken magazine rack and providing it a new lease of life

Remodelling an old broken magazine rack and providing it a new lease of life

Storage remedies on a shoestring by remodelling previous furniture

What do you do with an outdated broken magazine rack, component of an old coffee table and a couple of oak floorboards you remodel the magazine rack generating it much more area productive , more practical and more powerful than ahead of. This was the resolution to an outdated quest of replacing an outdated magazine rack that broke many years ago.

If you are looking for a magazine rack and you don’t fancy making your personal then see the assortment right here. My preference is for wood with tons of modest pockets to hold your magazines organised but a wire or basket variety magazine rack could suit you requirements better in which case these are also displayed right here for your decision.

All photographs in the report have been taken by me.

In the distant past we purchased a rather nice wooden self-assembly magazine rack that served us effectively for a lot of many years but it was huge and bulky and wherever positioned would be in the way, so would finish up becoming shoved in a corner creating casual accessibility to magazines much less hassle-free.

The magazine rack was a great size wide adequate for keeping plenty of magazines, but only had one particular divider (in the centre) leaving a broad space either side exactly where magazines which require supporting would just flop, curve, bend and slip down to the bottom of the magazine rack producing it challenging to uncover them and with so numerous magazines bunched together with no division you typically waste beneficial time thumbing via loads of previous magazines striving to locate the a single you want.

As with a whole lot of self-assembly furniture the magazine rack even though of excellent general design and style , apart from not possessing ample dividers, was inherently weak and essential small servicing a couple of instances to strengthen the divider and base. Nonetheless, when one particular of the wooden side panels entirely split in half and the total factor fell apart my wife didn’t want me to fix it particularly simply because it was all as well typically shoved in a corner out of the way the place it was inconvenient to use. So I took the pieces of the broken magazine rack down to my shed for scrap wood (for use in potential DIY projects) and we entered an era of coffee tables becoming the new dumping ground for magazines.

Observing what individuals do and remodelling old furniture to meet those wants. Right after many years of a properly very good side table (element of a nest of tables) being used as a dumping ground for magazines when it could be far better utilised as a appropriate coffee table, if only a suitably functional magazine rack could be identified, I decided it was time to consider out of the box to find the remedy.

Observing more than time the quantity of magazines kept on the coffee table is not that fantastic and would only get up half the area of the old magazine rack, it occurred to me that cutting the previous magazine rack in half (lengthways) would supply adequate storage room for the magazines. And adding a divider in the remaining half would make the region either side of the divider narrow adequate to avert the magazines from bending and slipping down as they use to.

It also occurred to me that the magazine rack is about the exact same length as the coffee table so if it was redesigned correctly rather than getting in everyone’s way on the floor, with people knocking into it and tripping over it, the magazine rack could just nestle in following to the table out of the way and however be to hand.

So it was off to the shed to see what supplies I had to hand to make the design a reality. And on sifting by means of all the odd bits of scrap wood I came up with two short pieces of oak floorboards leftover from just lately relaying our upper landing with oak flooring element of an old coffee table best, the rest of it possessing been utilised to make a remote control holder and a divider (initially for LPs) from the days prior to CDs, a time when we stored our LP assortment in the bottom of a hi-fi cabinet.

The oak floorboards would form the new base and back of the remodelled magazine rack and the segment of table top the new front.

1. Decide on your style and assemble all the resources you’ll want for your DIY undertaking. In this situation an outdated broken magazine rack, some oak flooring (pine or plywood would be as equally excellent) and an part of an previous plywood table top and for the divider and old LP divider.

2. For the front of the remodelled magazine rack I utilized component of an previous table prime, made from plywood the rest of the table best obtaining previously becoming used to make a remote handle holder. The table leading piece was the appropriate height so only essential cutting to the appropriate length after the leg supports had been eliminated and the wood manufactured very good with a belt sander. The leg supports (glued and screwed) have been eliminated by undoing the screws and carefully knocking them off with a chisel and wooden mallet, and the wood then smoothed with the belt sander.

3. The old magazine rack was placed over the piece of table leading to mark the correct length for cutting. The part was lower just outdoors the marked lines to guarantee a tight match, and after minimize positioned in position to test for fit.

4. The stays of the old magazine rack was disassembled and the two side panels positioned over each other to mark up and lower to minimize their width by just in excess of half of the original dimension as portion of the redesign.

5. For the base and sides, as with the piece of table prime the two oak floorboards were the appropriate width and only essential cutting to length I wonder what the odds are on this taking place. In fact as the oak boards are tongue and groove the tongue on the base board neatly support the off minimize from the table best and the tongue on the new back piece neatly slips above the decrease rail of the unique magazine rack.

6. The base and back are glued and pinned in area on the magazine rack employing just a couple of small 25mm pins both side making use of a nail gun and ‘no nails’ wood glue. Then clamped in spot until finally the glue sets firmly adequate to carry on, which in this case was just more than ten minutes see part below on sourcing nearby supplies for additional particulars.

seven. Once the development was company enough to continue I marked and drilled two holes in the base to fit the divider, which initially becoming a divider in an LP cabinet and obtaining to help the bodyweight of LPs gives a solid and rigid fitting.

8. Once the outdated LP divider was pushed into place the following duties was to minimize a piece of wood from a spare bit of timber and stick it on the bottom at the back as a new leg assistance for the modified magazine rack and then glue and pin the front section in location.

9. Getting completed the major DIY project all that remains is to give it a trial run for a although and make any minor tweaks ahead of a last sanding down and finishing off with a great lick of wood stain. A single addition I would like to take into account before wood staining it is incorporating a pen holder to the outdoors, on a single side of the magazine rack.

The glue I employed in this DIY project was a ‘no nails’ wood glue from a ‘Trade’ resources and equipment supplier that also sells to the public at trade charges there are very a few in Bristol and they are worth in search of out. In the past I have purchased the wood glue and ‘no nails’ wood glue from a single of the DIY supper merchants, but it is not inexpensive. Just lately, in sourcing a supplier for a particular make and model of a belt sander needed for one more DIY venture we stumbled across trade centre that supplied it. The fantastic point about trade centres, the place they are tucked away on industrial estates, is that as properly as promoting to the trade at trade costs numerous of them also promote to the public and at ‘trade’ price tag. I know of a number of in Bristol, most are creating merchants, 1 ‘electrical supplies’, a glass merchant and now a equipment and equipment accessories. The 1 exception is a confectionary trade centre that will only sell to trade and from my expertise ‘trade centres’ on the higher street rather than on an industrial estate (usually builders’ merchants) will have a two-tier pricing structure e.g. they sell to the public at retail rates but give trade generous discounts.

In this case, when we identified a trade centre specialising in equipment and add-ons tucked away on a trading estate that offered the belt sander I was searching for I also obtained some ‘no nails’ wood glue at the very same time and have since gone back for a lot more not only since it truly is a quarter of the price tag we generally pay out in a DIY retailer but also due to the fact it is a far better product. The ‘no nails’ we now purchase sets extremely speedily, at times too rapid in that if you will not wipe off any surplus glue right away it really is challenging to clean off afterwards. Not only that but this glue defiantly adheres greater and provides a considerably more powerful bond than other ‘no nails’ I have use in the previous so I’m well pleased with it.

So it pays to supply your materials and seek out out the greatest suppliers that give the best service.

The modified magazine total for reuse and 1 quiet weekend when I’m not carrying out the gardening just demands a appropriate rubdown and a lick of wood stain and polish to carry it back to its former glory.