DIY Knife Holder

I hate stuff on my counters.  It's really hard to keep them cleaned off and organized.  It's too easy to just throw stuff down and let it sit there. 

Today while cleaning off all the stuff I had a moment of brilliance.  No Pinterest inspiration here.  Just straight out of my own head.  I knew there had to be something in my garage that I could use and make for free that would clear off my clunky knife block and give me more space.  Not much more space but at least it would be one less thing to stare at.

I went out to the garage and found a piece of wood that worked perfectly.  So here's how you can make your own knife holder for your drawers.

First, measure the width of your drawer.

Cut down a piece of wood to fit tightly in the drawer so you don't have to use any brackets to hold the wood in place.  Draw a line at the bottom of the wood so you know how far down to make your cuts.  My slots are spaced 1 inch apart.  The last slot on the right is longer for my biggest knife to fit.

Make sure your wood fits in the drawer and looks right.  Then prime and paint if you choose.

After the everything is dry put the wood back in the drawer and place your knives in the drawer. 

It's that simple and it didn't even take that long to make. 

I hope you have a great week!

LUNCH anyone?

Since we built the shelves in the kitchen I haven't been happy with what I had up there.  It just wasn't looking right to me.  So I went to my go-to place for inspiration, Pinterest. 

I found my inspiration picture very quickly.  I was looking for something easy and inexpensive.  Basically I wanted to "shop" my house and use what I already had. 

Source

 

This picture looked simple and elegant and I had pretty much everything I needed except for the artwork.  But remember, I'm doing this on the cheap so I don't want to spend anything.

I also found the picture below while doing the same search for kitchen shelves and I loved the vintage "LUNCH" sign. 

Source 

I remembered a friend gave me a piece of wood that she hadn't used and it was sitting in my garage waiting for me to find a place for it. 

So I got busy.

I sized out my letters in Microsoft Word, printed them out, cut them out, traced them on contact paper and then cut the letters out of that.  The first time I did this I wanted my board to look just like the inspiration picture. 

First, I spray painted my bottom coat black then put the letters on once the paint was dry.  Then I spray painted white on top of the letters so when I peeled off the letters the black would show through.  I got too "sand paper happy" and sanded off too much and it just didn't look right.  So I started over.

I followed the same method here.

I sanded the board back down where there was just a little bit of black left.  I spray painted a layer of white over the black then put down new letters cut out of contact paper.  Then I sprayed green over the white.  I peeled off my letters and started sanding. 

The more I sanded more black came through on the white letters.  When it comes to distressing something I'm always a little nervous to do it.  I'm afraid I'm going to go overboard and mess everything up (like I did the first time) so this go-around I was very cautious not to do that. 

This was a happy accident that turned out lovely.  Now I need to figure out what to do for art on the top shelf in the kitchen.  Sometimes I look at the sign and think it still looks too perfect but quite frankly I was tired of sanding.  So here it is all finished.

Have a great weekend!