apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i'm really torn about having big, open bookcases like this in my own place. since my living room is also my dining room and bedroom, i think the look of this would be too dominating and cluttery. anyone ever pull this off in a studio?

a little moulding around the top and it would look like a built in.

I think it reads as "wall." I don't think books are "cluttery." At any rate, I'm not paranoid about clutter, so long as the room is clean. IMHO, the bookcase X2 is genius.

this is great, and the best thing you can do for a "cluttery" space is give it a good place to put things away.

I wonder how long they have had this. I love floor to ceiling display cases, but Expedit is not designed to carry a limited amount of weight. I'd worry if the bottom case could support all of those books, plus the weight of another filled bookcase. But, I worry a lot.

LOVE Expedit, especially vertically times two, but I wish IKEA would stop raising their prices. I bought my 4-up unit a few years ago for $100 and now they're $150. They sell like hotcakes on CL, too.

I am a worrier too, quiltmaster. Should people be reminded to bolt this to the wall? Looks nice though.

I love this look, but keep in mind the height of two of these cases together. You need to have over 9ft ceilings to accommodate both pieces. Always bring your dimensions and a measuring tape when you go to purchase furniture.

Regarding safety: I had stacked EXPEDITs in my last apartment for over a year and they never showed any signs of falling over or falling apart. Oh, and they weren't fastened to the wall either. They seemed to work fine. I've seen them stacked that way inside the IKEA in Brisbane too.

Heather, in my last studio apartment, I used two of the 2x4 Expadit bookcases to divide the room into living and sleeping spaces. I think they made a great room divider in a small space. But I'd advise you to be deliberate with the scale. This stacked look works so well here because of the airy, high ceilings.

If you want to minimize the look of clutter in a small space, get some of the boxes or baskets that fit the bookcase and hide the clutter. Also, the bookcases in this photo are stuffed with books for a casual, used bookstore feel. It's comfortable and cozy, but it works because of the size of the room and the neutral palate. In a smaller space, to minimize the cluttered look, I'd arrange the books so that each shelf has books of the same height. You could go a step further and arrange them by color, but I find I have too many paperbacks with no single overall color.

I really like the look---I do hope they at least screwed the cases to the wall, esp. the top one. I also agree with quiltmasster---I would tend not to put to much heavy stuff on the top one. Baskets and vases and less books on top. Right now it looks a lot to top heavy with books.
I do miss other decorative objects within the unit.
If you live in an earthquake area this could be really a problem.

Love it! I've been planning on stacking a 2x4 expedit on top of my 4x4 expedit for awhile, and am glad to see an photo evidence of how great stacked expedits look.

I think this is too massive. I love expedits on their own but this just makes me want to crane my neck back and worry it would fall down, even though it's fastened.

I don't like cabinets and shelves and such that rise so high above door height when filled with things like books. It looks, to repeat myself, too massive. I'd prefer some smaller decorations in the top two rows. Vases and pictures and such or some statuettes and the like to lighten it up.

several problems:

1) It looks like two bookcases haphazardly stacked on one another (although using some trim to hide this might help)

2) How do you reach the the top sections without a ladder

3) It completely overwhelms the rest of the room with its mass and height

4) The back of the Eames chair is upside down

Please people, hire a carpenter - contribute to the economy - and get something good looking at the same time.

/\/\ Ditto Guerilla

Gasp! This makes my heart stop thinking of the catastrophic damage even a small earthquake would cause in that room. I would NEVER feel safe sitting there.

However as an idea, and if situated on reliably stable ground elsewhere, I do love a full wall of shelves. There's something minimal about containing all of your books and stuff in a nice tight grid.

Good luck!

(people, do at least read the post before commenting. it SAYS they are fastened to the wall.)

looking at that picture makes me fear for the life of anyone sitting on that little white chair. i know they are fastened to the wall but the look still conveys impending doom to me.

^ It may be fastened to the wall but those books aren't. And if that's the front door, good luck getting out of there after an earthquake.

i like it.

I agree w/guerrilla.

Is it just me or does the back of that LCW chair appear to be upside down?

I concur with quiltmaster; this is rather unstable, even mounted to the wall.

I had one of the Expedit before and the way the individual shelves/cubes are assembled together, I was very nervous how long before they collapse and i'd be victim to the the headline "man killed by fallen books."

The idea is good but using Expedit to execute this is rather scary. The height of the structure really draws the eye to the height of the space, I like that...but like GUERILLA said, invest in something with more quality and stability.

scmntgirl - The prices are only going to continue going up because the dollar is continuing to slide in value against world currencies. It's not Ikea's fault that George Bush borrowed $4 trillion dollars to finance tax cuts we couldn't afford and destroyed the value of the dollar.

Looking at that makes me nervous!

My boyfriend and I just moved into a new apartment with ridiculously high ceilings and we're in desperate need of book storage. Can we get some more info on how these are anchored to the wall, and are they anchored to each other?

RichardinLA - No, IKEA raised the prices because Expedit is a super hot product and they can sell LOTS of them for what is still a relatively cheap price to the consumer. Please, discussing the merits of an IKEA bookcase has nothing to do with politics.