Cook Book Stand

I was walking up and down the aisles of Lowes for a good hour trying to come up with some Christmas gift ideas for my wife, daughter and nephew. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do but didn't have a design or plan in mind. One thought I had for my wife was an under-cabinet pull down cookbook holder. I've seen these offered from Knape and Vogt for anywhere between $60 and $160. While a nice product, I was hoping for something more in the $10-15 range. After standing in the dowel rod / trim aisle for a good while I decided to pull out the only paper I had on me (an old receipt) and start designing a table mount version. I must have been standing there a good while since I had about a dozen Lowe's workers ask me if I needed help or if anything was wrong. I told them I was trying to design a cook book holder for my wife and most of them looked at me as if I was crazy. "You could probably buy one" was one of the more common responses. 

After a few sketches I came up with a design very similar to what you see above. I hadn't a good idea for the page weights at this time (the dangly things that help hold the pages down in stiff bound books) but decided to pick up some dowels and use some extra 1x's I had at home. I made sure the top of the holder could easily accommodate an 8 1/2" x 11" book or printed page.

After my second round through the aisles I thought of finial knobs for lamps which ended up leading me to some nice ceiling fan pulls. I mounted them at the very top and they swing out of the way easily when they are not needed.

I ended up getting some nice high gloss white spray paint and built up some good solid layers over a few days and dropped in the page weights. I think it turned out just fine. While it doesn't conveniently fold up into the cabinets its narrow profile does store nicely against a wall or in the pantry. Plus it is more handy to move it around the counter as needed instead of being fixed to one cabinet.