How To Convert Scrap Flooring Into A Lens Drawer

Over the last week or so, I moved into a brand new office. It used to be a print house, so the floor was tainted beyond repair. (we actually took some floor tiles off and they had ink on the bottom). So we covered the entire thing with laminate flooring. Now we had some tiles that we cut in the wrong lengths spare flooring ,which was great because I needed something to put my lenses in. And so was invented the laminate flooring lens drawer.

The idea is quite simple – place all my lenses in a drawer but still maintain some order and safety, and not have them roll onto each other. This really quick step by step tutorial will show you how it was done.

I was using a 5 drawer IKEA ALEX unit, but the same thing probably applies for every other drawer unit in the world.

Step 1 – Materials

• Use scrap laminate flooring. You may have some left if you just did your floor and was a total noob with the saw.
• Quick Glue (or hot glue gun or any other glue you fancy)
• That weird sponge you put under the flooring.
• and empty drawer and some lost lenses.

Step Two – Measure

Measure the width, length and depth of the drawer. Mine was 8.5cm deep with a length of 51cm and width of 29cm. Here is the thing though, Being an IKEA product, the rails did not open all the way, so I could really only use two thirds of the drawer. The remaining third would forever remain in the box and any lenses placed there will never be touched.

I decided to split the drawer in three, so I needed two 51cm long horizontal dividers. For vertical dividers, I used the same leftovers only cut into 9.1cm pieces. It is the width of the drawer minus the width of two floorboards, divided in three.

Step 3 – Cut

depending on how fancy you want to get, you can probably use any saw. My new office has a wood workshop just around the corner and they were kind enough to cut the boards in exchange for a nice cup of coffee.

The main advantage of cutting with a nice wood table is the clean edges so it would be easy to glue everything together.

Step 4 – Make Lens Compartments

Now you need to actually place the dividers. Make sure you have all your lenses mapped to cells before gluing everything together. The best thing is to make a drawing and make sure each lens has a cell.

Glue the dividers together using super glue or a hot glue gun.

Step 5 – Place sponge, dividers and reassemble

Once you have the divide set built place some sponge leftovers in the drawer to cover the bottom and position the divider set inside.

P.S.

Living in a humid location? don’t forget to put some dehydrating gel in the drawer.

P.P.S. 

If you are already in IKEA you may wanna see if they have a matching utensils insert. Sadly they did not have one to fit the Alex unit.

P.P.P.S.

This is a wonderful opportunity to trick your significant other to a furniture store.