Cardboard

I took a 3d-sculpture class a few years ago, and one of the most valuable lessons I took from it was the power of prototyping with cardboard. The shelving unit of this project involves large slats of wood, and any mistakes in my measurements would be expensive, and time consuming. Instead, I chose to use my blueprints to cut into cardboard first, and then to cut my wood based on this carboard cutout.

The price for this? Free. Dumpster diving for large sheets of cardboard is surprisingly easy, and really rather clean. Many companies have two dumpsters, one for garbage, and one for the the cardboard and packaging from their receiving departments. Colleges as well are great locations to snipe out dumpsters marked 'cardboard.'

I dumpster dove, and found a great large box perfect for the size I was looking for. The bowas still assembled, and was full of huge staples. After carefully removing these, I unfolded the box and taped the open sides closed so I had one sheet large enough for the blueprint.

After consulting my blueprints, (below) and carefully marking and cutting, I pulled out a pretty accurate design, perfect for the wood I'll be cutting. And as the real test, it fits perfectly into the space it's supposed to:

Again, my favorite thing about cardboard is that is has a lot of give. I did have one fairly large mistake in my blueprint, and this became apparent quickly. I simply cut out a new strip, taped it to the edge with the mistake, and I have a quick guide for the wood cutting on how to rectify that mistake! Excellent. In the picture below, it looks like there is a lot of extra space in between the dresser, and there is. When i'm finished, i'll be wedging the dresser directly against this.