Decorating on a Budget: Berni Offers Free Download & Plans for 3D Printed Beer Bottle Furniture Joint 

Have you ever spent hours–after generously hosting a party at your house–sweeping away all the festivity remnants into the trash and recycling bin? Depending on your guests, the empty beer bottle pile can sometimes appear staggering, if not downright obscene. Now though, Berni has some great ideas that you can work on next Saturday, before or after your next big pow-wow, while you sip on a nice frosty IPA. Be sure to save the bottle when you are done, because it might just be propping up your work shoes for tomorrow or your boots for this weekend’s hike.

Meant for “poor college students,” this Instructable is a genius alternative to the useless and outdated beer can pyramid from days of yore. Save your empties for making fun, easy furniture instead, linking it all together with the 3D printed Berni Joint through the “Beer Bottle Furniture” project.

Using material you probably have lying around, like bottles and wood board, you too can easily start organizing your apartment, house, or dorm room, adding to your interior decorating with multiple different schemes once you’ve got a few of the Berni Joints handy–and the amount of materials needed is almost comically simple:

• Berni Joints (print out from .stl file on Thingiverse or purchase online at Berni) 
• Wood screws
• Beer Bottles
• Wood Board, any type, with < 0.8 in. thicknessg

You can have a lot of fun with this project if you are crafty, adorning the beer bottles accordingly, or if you prefer the uber I-don’t-care look, just leave the scruffy labels on. There are a multitude of ways to decorate bottles. Painting is the obvious choice, but you can also accommodate these vehicles once meant for libations by furthering their lives with all sorts of different decorations and colors, as they make their way permanently into your home.

Next comes fun with the piece of wooden scrap wood. Any ideas on how you’d like to decorate it? Size? That’s all up to you at the arts and crafts table, as well as the workshop if you have access to power tools and want to cut the wood to a certain size. You could also engrave your name if you feel like getting elaborate, and have access to the equipment.

At that point, you’ll need to have your four 3D printed joints ready for attachment to the tops of the beer bottles. Placing the board in the middle of the 3D printed parts, you’ll want to screw it down to prevent it from slipping out of place.

Not just restricted to holding up your shoe collection, this idea can work for a number of different furniture and organizational ideas from shoes and clothing to books, supplies, or even kitchen stuff. While the wooden furniture should be very resilient due to the strength of the glass bottles, be apprised that this is not meant for sitting or holding an inappropriate amount of weight. Enjoy–and cheers!

Is this a design that appeals to you? Are you planning to download the 3D printed joint? Tell us about it in the 3D Printed Beer Bottle Furniture Joint forum thread over at 3DPB.com.

You could even engrave the wood board