My Hide-Away Printer Project

You’ve already seen my filing trunk that I revealed last week which helped with papers and organizing for my desk area.  Now I am excited to reveal my hide-away printer!

My husband and I hang almost all our clothes so we weren’t making the most of our Hemnes Ikea dresser and I did not want a big printer out in the open in my “office area” since it’s right in our Master Bedroom.  So I did a complete make-shift DIY project and turned one of the drawers into a fold down hide-away printer area.  Then I used the drawer above it to store all my extra office goods like paper, scissors, pens, paper clips etc…

I don’t have the best tutorial and how to pictures for this project because it was COMLETELY make-shift as I went.  I literally went to Lowe’s and bought like 20 different items I thought may be able to help me make it work, came home dumped them all out and started at it.

My {sort of} How To Turn a Drawer into a Hide-Away Printer

If you’re familiar with the Hemnes dresser from Ikea you know that the drawer fronts are attached with wooden dowels and two metal screws.  I removed all the pieces allowing the front panel piece to be free-standing.



Next, the particle board bottom is grooved into the front panel piece so in order for it to be able to fold down and back up the bottom board couldn’t go into that groove anymore so I just used an x-acto knife and cut it off.



Out of all the goods I bought these were the two that ended up being what I used.   I used three 2&half” utility hinges and a right hand and left hand support hinge.

    

I don’ t have any pictures of how I went about attaching this all together because it was one big hot mess. 
For each hinge (one on the far left, on the far right, and in the exact middle) I cut away a part of the bottom so the center of the hinge would sit in that area.  Then supporting the front panel laying flat open, I screwed the hinge into place into the bottom drawer piece and the front panel.  The bottom particle board is very thin so the screws of the hinge stick out through the bottom.  To be sure they didn’t rip back out I used a size 6 washer and bolt on the underside of the drawer to help secure the hinge into place. 



I wish I had a few more pictures and better descriptions of what I did but from this picture I hope you get the idea of how it’s composed together.
The last and final step drilling a small hole in the back of the drawer (through the bottom) to feed the power cable through to the printer.  Our printer is wireless which I would imagine is crucial in being able to do this for your own project.  The only cable leaving our printer is the power cable which made this a convenient project to do. 



As mentioned I use the drawer above the printer drawer to store the remainder of my office needs that would typically go into your desk drawer.  Now our Hemnes dresser is a fully functional piece of furniture in our bedroom as a half dresser – half office organizer!

 

Once again, here’s another big sneak peek at our Master Bedroom reveal, and between this and my filing trunk post you’ve now seen all four walls of our room.  I’m putting together a final master reveal and can’t wait to show off all the little details.  I am in LOVE with the big large frame that my best friend gave me that fit perfectly around our TV.

Using some books stacked on top of our DVR it helps blend in the DVR and DVD player as a collection.  The big yelllow vase was a make over I showed here, and I love love love my big beautiful “S”.

So what do you think!? Am I the only crazy enough one to go about such a “cosmetic” project for the sole purpose to hide a printer?  This one came so close to becoming a big epic #fail but in the end it worked and I’m so happy! 

Last final stage of my little office area will be hiding those cables!  I haven’t come up with any super great ideas yet so still working on that one. 

Linked up with these great parties and the others found here:

Weekend Wrap Up Party - Tatertots and Jello

Furniture Feature Friday - Miss Mustard SeedTip Me Tuesday - Tip Junkie

Tutes and Tips Tuesday - HomeStories A to Z
Get Your Craft on Tuesday - Today's Creative Blog