From the time we bought the house and even before we redid the kitchen I’ve looked into the spice cabinet and said “I should really make a stepped riser for this shelf so I can see the spices in the back more easily.” Well, twenty-plus years later I have finally done it. I was inspired by a curved off-cut from the library step stool project that was nicely laminated one inch plywood. I had two pieces still taped together from being band sawed. The matching curves made me think of the ends of something at first thought I was thinking bookends and then the spice organizer came to me.

I also liked the idea of using these off-cuts because I wanted to try a method I had learned for filling the edges of plywood to get a nice smooth surface for painting. It uses joint compound to fill all the fuzzies and voids as opposed to wood filler.

After some measuring and rough sizing for the typical spice bottles I proceeded to clean up the band sawn edges on the belt sander with the ends still taped together. Then I cut the curve to the right length in the back to fit neatly in the cabinet. Two quarter inch grooves for shelves and two one inch notches in the bottom and the back for some more structure also plywood off-cuts. All of the plywood I was using was pre-sanded on at least one side and in the case of my one inch laminations both sides.

I glued up all the structure and the shelves since it’s plywood and it’s not really going to change shape that much. It came out quite rigid and strong. I filled all the edges with joint compound and let it harden over night and then sanded them flush and did 120 and 220 grit passes. I primed it with a really good latex primer and let that dry over night and then I sanded it again with 220 grit. I put a final coat of semi-gloss super white latex on after that.

It is probably the nicest paint finish on wood that I’ve done so far and the edges came out great. I’m still working on the discipline to do as much sanding and coats of primer etc… that would really perfect it, but I’m making progress.

It looks great in the cabinet and it works extremely well, so hopefully I’ll get to use it for another twenty plus years at least.