Yarn Storage Revamp Project Complete

My vision has finally come together with the completion of this project.  It was a rather labor-intensive project.  It was, however, ridiculously inexpensive and fairly simple to execute.  So here's a little DIY tutorial for any other frugal crafters out there...

Hanging Bucket Yarn Storage

What you'll need:
*buckets
*straight power saw
*power drill (with 1/4" bit)
*power sander (optional)
*1/4" eye bolts (with 2 hex nuts each)
*S hooks
*screw eyes with ceiling anchors
*1/4" bolts of various determined lengths (with hex nut)
*sharpie
*ruler/tape measure (I used both)
*screwdriver (to install anchors and screw eyes)
*wrench (to tighten hex nuts/bolts)

I used ten 5-gallon pickle buckets and five 3-gallon pickle buckets that I got from my younger brother's fast food restaurant.  They're super easy to get completely free because they are considered trash once empty.

Step 1: Rinse the buckets.  I rinsed mine by hosing them down in my parents yard.  I only did a quick rinse to start because I knew I'd be losing several inches of bucket (why clean it if you're not gonna use it!?)

Step 2: Mark the saw line.  I used my fabric tape measure to wrap a straight line around the bucket just below the handle hinge and marked it with my sharpie.

Step 3:  Saw the top of the buck off along the drawn line.  This step was extremely difficult for me.  I was sitting on an extra upturned bucket in my parents' driveway for a solid portion of the day.  I had to make a starter cut with a utility knife at 1 of the 2 hinge points to put my saw blade through.  Once I got going, I fell into a stride but I can honestly say that not even 1 of my cut buckets has a nice straight cut.  At least I can say I did it all by myself.  My dad held the first bucket while I sawed but he was fixing his gutters and didn't really have time to help.  This and the next step I would definitely recommend doing outside.

Step 4: (Optional)  Sand the edges.  I wasn't going to but my dad offer his power sander so I straightened up the edges a bit.

Step 5:  Clean the buckets.  After taking off about 4 inches of bucket off the top of all 15 buckets, I felt this was a good time to clean the pickle stink off the buckets.  I hate pickles so it was nice to scrub the gross smell away.  I used my Norwex cleaning paste to scour the insides and outsides of every single bucket.  It took away most of the smell and all the stickers from the outside of the buckets.  My dad says bleach will take the stink out of them but I don't use chemicals in my home and I wouldn't want the bleach to affect my fibers.  I'd say if you're comfortable using it to clean your house, you could use it to clean the buckets.  The smell is NOT permanent; you CAN make it go away :D  I let my buckets dry in the sun.  When I got them home I wiped them down with an enviro cloth and sprayed them a few times with odor eliminator and now they smell fine.

Step 6: Arrange buckets into desired pattern.  I chose this layout from a handful of drawings I did because it seemed like it would best suit my needs.  I arranged them upright on my living room floor so I could accurately measure where the joins needed to be.

Step 7:  Take measurements.  You may want to do some of this ahead of time if you're working with limited space like I was.  I measured the space I wanted to put it and determined that I had a little over 50" to work with.  My 5-gallon buckets measured 11" in diameter so I decided to make the widest point of my storage unit 5 buckets wide (55").  I already knew I wanted the entire unit to hang from at least 2 buckets so my design fell into place pretty quickly after that.  While the buckets were laid out in the desired arrangement, I measured how far apart my 2 hangers would be (also the points for the lower hangers) and marked all the points of intersection for the buckets plus the hanger points.  I took measurements of the buckets themselves to determine what length bolts to get.  At the top, 2 buckets together measured 1/4" so I got 1/2" long bolts.  At the bottom, the buckets were 1/2" apart so I got 1" long bolts and used a spacer (cut to length from a rubber hose).  I used the join markings on the top of the bucket to mark the holes on the side with a ruler.  The back join was 1" from the bottom of the bucket and the front join was 7 1/2".  The smaller buckets had different measurements so I used different size hardware.

Step 8:  Get hardware.  I got most of my hardware from Macs because it is very reasonably priced.  I made a list of exactly what I needed beforehand by taking all the measurements but I still ended up making 4 different trips to the hardware store just for this project.

Step 9:  Drill join holes in sides of buckets.  I used a flat board as a drop cloth of sorts for the plastic shavings that fell off in this step.   I made sure to drill ALL the necessary holes at this point.  For the larger buckets, this included all 30 join points, the 4 top holes for hanging hardware. and the 4 lower holes for additional lower hanging buckets.  The smaller buckets had 14 join points and 4 top holes for hanging

Step 10:  Attach buckets together.  I added one bucket at a time joining them first at the back to install the spacer, and then at the front with the shorter bolts.  I intentionally built my unit in 2 halves to that the 1 intersection point between the 2 could be added after both pieces were installed.  I added bolt eyes to the top points.

2 halves standing next to each other awaiting installation

Step 11:  Install hanging hardware.  Using the measurements I'd taken to determine where the hangers would be, I plotted points on the ceiling at 1" and 7 1/2" from the wall.  I used heavy duty ceiling anchors and installed the screw eyes, and then added S hooks.

in the middle of installing the lower bolt eyes

Step 12:  Install unit.  I hung up one piece at a time from the S hooks installing the last join bolts afterwards.  I also added the lower bolt eyes once the unit was on the wall.  From those I hung 2 sets of S hooks (necessary because of the bucket size difference) and installed the smaller lower unit.

Installation Complete!

Adjust any hardware necessary and stock with yarn!

I apologize for not taking any other progress shots of this project but the portions of it that took place at my parents house were all gritty and outdoors so it wasn't very conducive to taking snapshots.  And really, there wasn't much to see through most of the project.

Remember that one blog that inspired me: 

  

Thanks YarnBombLove for inspiring my crafty yarn storage revamp!



****Altogether, this project cost me less that $10!!!!!