Part knife block - part necessary safety measure

I'd never been a big fan of knife blocks, until that sunny afternoon when my small child came into the living room with a large Chef's knife that he had blindly pulled from the top kitchen drawer, passing it to me and proceeding back in to grab another - I decided that it was possibly time to consider an alternative living arrangement for the sharp objects.

This knife block is great - you can make it as big/little as you want and as ugly/pretty as you see fit. Super easy to construct and holds whatever size knives you possess. Start out by cutting 5 pieces of wood (a box without the top) - it will be filled with wooden skewers, so the height of the four sides should be the height of a skewer. We did the two big sides 200mm x 200mm and the two smalls 200mm x 100mm. The bottom length should be 200mm plus the thickness of your wood x 2. The wood we used is 7mm thick - so the length of our bottom piece is 214mm. The width is the same as your small side - 100mm. 

Nail all your sides together - making sure that the small sides "cap" the ends of the box. (I am not sure if "cap the ends of the box" is a carpentry term but people make stuff up all the time - this box ain't fancy - figure it out!) Get the bottom on and start filling with skewers! 

You can leave the wood on the knife block raw - which looks pretty cool  (if you don't use old nasty pieces of wood from pallets you find down dodgy alleyways - which we do) or you can paint it up to match your hip decor - either way, it's a pretty fun little build and keeps little children fingers safe from the chop.