Too many books and not enough storage? Shareable's Malcolm Harris ran into that problem after moving into a small apartment. With budget concerns in mind, Malcolm solved the storage issue with a few bed slats and cheap ($1!) brackets from Ikea. Here's how he did it.
When I moved to Brooklyn, I brought around 750 books with me. I've always had a book-buying problem, and I don't have a parental storage room to access. The consequence is I have to run around with hundreds of pounds of books whenever I'm moving. Once I tricked some friends into carrying them to the fourth floor, I had to figure out a way to store them in a small room in a small apartment.
Having spent all of my shelf money on books, my original plan was to find bookshelves on the street or free on Craigslist. I probably could have (this strategy worked with chairs), but having boxes and boxes of books piled unopened in your room makes it hard to feel at home in a new space. What I did find on the street was a set of bed slats in reasonably good condition.
My roommate Max faced a similar predicament, so we came up with a solution. We went to Ikea and he got another set of bed slats ($9) and we stocked up on the cheapest brackets they have (2 for $1). With our third roommate Will's battery-powered drill (if you don't have a drill, try looking for one on Rentalic, Snapgoods, or Neighborgoods), level, and stud finder, we screwed the brackets into the wall, laid two slats on each one, and screwed those into the brackets.
With this design, you can adjust the brackets onto studs, making life a lot easier. No sawing wood required. And you can put up a whole wall of them in an afternoon, at just over two bucks a pop.
Ikea's Cheapest Bookshelves | Shareable
Shareable is the online magazine that tells the story of sharing. They cover the people and projects bringing a shareable world to life, and share how-tos so you can make a sharing real in your life.
Image by TrotzOlga (Shutterstock).
Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.
nascar bristol narwhal st louis university mario manningham mario manningham williams syndrome hoya
No comments:
Post a Comment