Shelving

As DIY projects go, this is one of my favorites. A photo of one popped up here on Apartment Therapy last year, and it’s been in my crosshairs ever since. I love this shelving system because it’s simple, yet pretty, and can be configured in multiple ways. It’s also very easy to make, with a little precision and patience.

Kristin’s The Amazing Staircase is not only one of our favourite AT posts of all time, it’s a glowing example of utilizing limited space efficiently. Staircases are often overlooked for their storage space potential, but the interior architecture feature can often be converted by using the space ontop, inside, under or over the stairs themselves.

If you live in a small space that is short on closets you may find yourself surrounded by a variety of “storage solutions.” Unfortunately, the visual appeal of giant plastic boxes is pretty low, so why not convert your rubbermaids to a relaxing reading nook?It’s amazing what a quilted bedspread, a couple of throw pillows and a faux fur rug can do!

Reusing old drawers as shelving is something we’ve discussed here a few times before. In fact, you may recognize one of these drawers from a post on the subject. While I’ve been using drawers as shelving for a couple of years, I wanted to take the concept to the next level.I had already been using one of these drawers as a wall shelf in my bedroom and when I gave the bedroom a makeover, I wasn’t sure whether I would use the drawers again.

Hello, beautiful, dresser! I have a similar piece on my DIY To Do for the summer, so I was super inspired by the creative addition of herringbone and the piece’s simple white finish: “The dark and light woods, leather and crisp white paint work wonderfully together, and the herringbone pattern is just amazing and apparently quite simple to make,” writes Design*Sponge. Read on for full the project’s full description and instruction.

A long weekend to Amanda and her husband usually involves some sort of DIY project. Recently, they had an empty wall in their living room that was in desperate need of some attention, and more storage. Their project is pretty remarkable… In need of a solution that took up minimal space, but added more functionality to our living room, Amanda and her husband figured out how to build a wall mounted shelf and combined desk. Shelves can be moved around as needed.

All this week we’re talking about bathroom renovations, starting with Ashley’s recent remodel, and following up with tons of helpful posts about the process! Floating shelves are fantastic, and I knew I wanted one above the tub in my new bathroom. We searched high and low for a floating shelf that not only looked good, but could hold a lot of weight without sagging —especially because the wall is pretty long.

Here’s a room with beautiful bones—stunning wood floors, classic fireplace, tasteful paint colors, interesting accent wall, high ceilings—but can it be even better? Here’s how the homeowner kept everything that’s good about this room, while remedying the “big empty space!” next to the fireplace. First, here’s how Lindsay of Indigo & Gray described the situation before the change: We had just moved into our brand new house.

Here’s a lovely dining room that boasts ample natural light, beautiful wood floors, covetable furnishings, a graceful light fixture, and happy plants. It’s nearly perfect! There is, however, the matter of that huge blank wall that somewhat sucks the life out of the room… This is so fun!

Many makeovers involve transforming dark rooms with white paint and paring things down, but this one is completely the opposite. This room is about to get a lot darker, significantly fuller, and exponentially more fabulous—with one special surprise. This is absolutely stunning. The room has the feel of a 200-year-old study, a magical place to stumble upon in an ancient home. One would never guess it was totally put together from scratch.

The ubiquitous white cube shelf unit is affordable, attractively minimalist, and endlessly useful, but occasionally it needs a bit of a twist to fit in with the rest of a home’s decor. This particular unit—similar to this one from Target or this one from IKEA—needed some real TLC: I had this six-cube shelving unit in the playroom. It has several scratches on top and stickers on the sides but it was still in good shape.

For every item IKEA brings into this world, there’s at least 10 ways to improve upon it, or make it your own. Some hacks are laboriously complicated and too involved for most humans, other projects are easy for just about anyone to pull off. If you’re looking for some super simple ways to tweak, alter, improve, or upgrade your shelving, here are nine ways to hack those BILLYs, EKBYs, EVETs, and LACKs.

This is a quick and satisfying project.

Hanging up some wall shelves is one of the best things you can do for a room, and even a shelf you don’t adore is a good thing to have. However, if you can take an ordinary, affordable shelving unit and transform it into something remarkable for just $5, why not?

Think outside the shelf.

Reuse old dresser drawers to create a bookshelf installation like Mike and Kate’s! The couple found free dressers on Craigslist and used the drawers to transform an empty wall in their Chicago home. dresser drawers (preferably dovetailed) paint wall mounting hardware measuring tape hammer drill From Kate: I turned to Craigslist and found free dressers, took the drawers, and trashed the dressers themselves (don’t worry—they were really ugly).

Most of us have a set of shelves that are decidedly more functional than they are fashionable. This shabby set survived the move into our new house and managed to look even shabbier sitting on our brand new tile floor and adjacent to a freshly painted wall. It only took me three years but it finally got a makeover more befitting its new station in life.The epiphany came as I was sketching plans for a cabinet and realized that, duh, a cabinet is basically a set of shelves with a back and a door!

Owning your own home means, for many folks, a myriad of DIY, improvement, and remodeling projects on your to-do list. This living room overhaul is an inspirational example of one woman’s journey in making her first home her own.Katherine Fugit is a contributing writer for Keep Smiling, a blog that offers encouragement “and other advice from first-time home buyers.” Looking at her personal blog, Me Machine, will give you a fantastic idea of her enviable eye for great design.

This family may not have a big entryway but they have a wide staircase which they turned into a mudroom of sorts with tons of storage for every family member. See how great it looks now:Even seeing other people get organized makes me feel good. I imagine these cubbies will fill up a lot more over time and not look quite as pretty, but what a great way to maximize this space along the stairs.

We have a sort-of suspicion that, up close, these shelves — made out of actual shelf mushrooms — might be a bit too reminiscent of those clocks made from overly lacquered slices of logs, but this photo gives them such Alice in Wonderland appeal that we kind of love them anyway.

This is a small space DIY that’s clever, easy, and cheap. AT:SF reader Killorn wrote to us and told us how she turned an IKEA LACK shelf into under-bed storage. Before She says: I could not find a suitable storage bed in my budget that fit in the 64″ x 88″ alcove in my tiny apartment (450 sq. ft.), so I decided to build a plywood stage around a rolling LACK shelf to give the bed the appearance of a built-in.