Ironing Board Cabinet Converted Into Shelving

Our San Francisco apartment had an old-style ironing board cabinet in the kitchen which wasn't being used. Rather than let it go as waisted space, I decided to clean it up and install some shelves. It was a fun weekend project and for the low $20 cost of supplies (some cheap wood, some finishing nails and some contact paper) it made a huge difference in our kitchen and created some fantastic new storage for my wife and I to work with...

The first step was to vacuum and clean out the dusty ironing board cabinet and take some measurements to determine how many shelves to install and what supplies I would need to purchase at the hardware store.

I determined I would add 5 new shelves which were just like the one shelve the cabinet already had. My shelves would need to be 3-1/2" x 12" and with the goal of keeping this project quick and easy I planned to mount the new shelves on a simple three-sided platform consisting of short lengths of 3/4" square dowels mounted into the cabinet walls.

Finally, I decided I would install some contact paper on the wood surfaces of the cabinet and new shelves to create a nice look and feel. 

Home from the hardware store: I measured, cut and sanded the wood I purchased before installing the contact paper into the existing cabinet space.

Next I held the new shelves where I wanted them to be installed, made sure they were level and traced their bottom edges--marking the back and side walls of the cabinet. The white contact paper made these lines easy to see.

Once that was done, I nailed the dowel supports into the cabinet using the finishing nails--being careful align their top edges up perfectly with the lines.

Then, I moved from bottom to top, installing the shelves by tacking them into each of the dowel supports with a finishing nail.

The final step was installing the contact paper on each of my new shelves.

Done! I was pretty happy with the final result. :)