DIY Built-In Drawer Organizers

I have a problem with Pinterest.

I *heart* Pinterest.

In fact, I think my Pinterest organization board is preeeety impressive.

Anyway, I’ve been eye-ballin’ this idea for a few weeks.  Truth be told, I hounded Mark.  I think at one point he confessed his pure and complete hatred for Pinterest.

Needless to say, Mark wasn’t having it with my drawer organization wishes.  I sorta got over it and decided to NOT remind Mark to mod the drawers for the 1,283rd time.

As luck would have it, the utinsel organizer from our house was about 3 mm too big for our camper drawers!!!  Yes!

Mark even looked at buying a new organizer but couldn’t find anything that would work.  So you know what that means!!  I gots me some built-in drawer dividers!

Problem was, we couldn’t find the exact dentil molding that the DIY called for so we opted for a bigger design with fewer notches (and less ability to space them).  This is what Mark used to make our drawer dividers.

Drawer Organization DIY

So here’s how Mark modified 2 of our kitchen drawers.

Supplies

  • Locktite Power Grab glue
  • 2 8-foot dentil trim
  • 2 6-inch wide X 24-inch long wood planks (1/8″ width) (our large utensil drawer was deeper so we got the wider planks)
  • 2 4-inch height X 48-inch long wood planks (1/8″ width)

Instructions

Maybe it’s self explanatory, but cut the dentil trim to the length of the drawer.  Make sure you have your notches exactly lined up and spacing correct or you have trim in the drawer that you will not be able to slide your divider drawers into.

Attach your cut dentil trim pieces to the inside of the drawer with the Locktite Power Grab and hold for several seconds.  Attach any remaining dividers and glue with dentil, once again, ensuring that your have your notches lined up.

Cut planks the necessary length to finish the dividers and slid them into the appropriate notches.

The molding we purchased had a thicker edge on one length and is thinner and more tapered on the other edge.  Here is a close up…

Dentil-Edge-Close-Up

Tips

When Mark attached the molding, he glued it with the thinner edge down toward the bottom of the drawer.  By doing so, it created a lip which the knives would slide under.  This made getting knives out a little annoying and cumbersome so Mark put some caulking around the affected edges of that one cubby hole as you can see below on the left.

Drawer-with-caulking

He also put several strips in the draw to help secure the boards, (they were a little wiggly and he had enough molding to do so.

Mark did 2 drawers.  We were able to go from this…

Untensil-Drawer-Before dentil-drawer-organizer

To this…

Organized-Silverware-Drawer Organized-Dentil-Drawer Drawer-After-Dentil-Molding Untensil-Drawer-with-Dividers

Conclusion

Needless to say, I’m VERY happy with it!  The dividers are exactly as they need to be as far as spacing, but with this molding there are less options to reconfigure.

By doing this quick mod, I was able to use the most of the space in my utensil drawers and get rid of my utinsel jar that use to sit on my countertop.  Less wasted space.

The Cost

For 2 drawers, about $38 (Lowes….you really need to lower your prices!).

So, not nearly as cost-effective as I had hoped it would be.  BUT it was 2 drawers and he did reinforce the dentil strips with several pieces. AND given the time-crunch we weren’t able to price-compare.

In summary, I’d say my man pretty well rocks!

9 thoughts on “DIY Built-In Drawer Organizers”

  1. Just read your about page but didn’t see a place to comment. You guys seem really awesome!

    Love the drawers. We had some tiny ones from ikea that fit well. They aren’t as pretty as yours but they work!

    Reply
    • Thanks Jenn! IKEA…yes! I wish we were closer to one. We were really cramming some last minute things in and found no other solution locally. Maybe we could’ve checked the RV stores.

      Reply
  2. To keep things from getting wedged in the dental molding you could use scrap dental molding. Cut small pieces from the scrap where the notch is and place them in all the drawer dental molding. Extra work but a good use for the scrap dental molding. It would also allow for staining better than calking.

    Reply

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