IKEA Hack: Lego Display Shelves

So let’s talk more about my family room project, shall we?

I have to tell you something first…

My husband is a big geek.

I mean that in the most LOVING way possible!

But he is.

He loves all things Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, WarCraft, Lego, etc.

Some of those I can sort-of get behind… 

(Legos are cool.  Star Wars is cool.  Star Trek is very cool.)

Some of those annoy me so much it makes my eyeballs itch… 

(Anything that has to do with computer games…or Warhammer…)

But even the “cool” things can be overdone, don’t you think?  For example, when your husband’s collection of LOTR Legos takes over the entire top of the chest of drawers…and then spills onto the bench….and the floor….

It got to be a bit much.

So really, the family room project was born from the necessity of finding somewhere ELSE to put all his Legos.  He suggested I build shelves for them in the family room.  That, of course, snowballed into a MUCH bigger project than just shelves!

But it is the shelves with which we will currently concern ourselves.  I wanted a little bit of an industrial vibe, and I considered many things…floating shelves, built-ins, a rustic display shelf.  But with cost always a consideration, I finally settled on an IKEA Vittsjo “hack” job inspired mostly by this one at Centsational Girl. 

One of my issues was that I had to be able to display my dear husband’s two-foot-tall Tower of Orthanc that was his only Christmas wish.  This hack by EAK! A House gave me the courage to do a little cutting to make the shelf fit my needs. 

The biggest alteration was the I removed half of one of the horizontal cross-pieces in order to make a double-tall shelf.  This was accomplished with the help of a $30 angle grinder from Lowe’s.  Say what you like about IKEA (and I often do)…but the metal this shelf is made of is tough stuff!  It would have taken forever and a day to cut through it with a hacksaw.  The angle grinder was super fast, plus it allowed me to shorten my cut-off piece to use for a new middle cross bar (see above), and grind down some of the integrated brackets that had been meant to hold the cross bar. (I had never used an angle grinder before, but it was fun!  Lots of sparks!)

I was left with one hole in the metal that wasn’t covered up.  So I filled it…with caulk!  I had to give the whole shelf a quick spray-over with black paint to hide the raw metal edges where I ground them down, so it is pretty well hidden during…shall we say… “casual observation.”  (So don’t look too closely, OK?)

This unit came with wood-like shelves for the top and the bottom, but glass shelves in the middle.  I used some scrap 1/4” underlayment I had in my garage to cut new middle shelves, stained with Rustoleum American Walnut stain.  For one thing…I like the look.  For another…it was a lot easier than cutting a glass shelf in half!

So now the LOTR Legos have their own new home…although sometimes, they still have to battle enemies unforeseen by Tolkien….

Geek parents tend to have Geek children who like to alter storylines….

Ta-da!

Now I have to figure out what to do with the Star Wars Legos….

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time
Perfectly Imperfect
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life

Triple Printers Console Cabinet

There was a strong temptation for me to entitle this post:  “She’s not dead.  Not yet.”  (And if you know what movie character I’m paraphrasing, you get 10 Chicken Points.)

It has been a very looonnnngg while since I’ve posted, or even been particularly active on the blogs at all.  I seem to have been part of the “where does blogging fit into my life” club…as I’ve found several other bloggers who have also taken long breaks, trying to answer that question!

I think I just managed to burn myself out a little between a summer market, a fall market, and Christmas signs for two shops and one small show.  Then there were Christmas preparations…and finally, a break!  It was delightful.  I loved that week after Christmas where there was really nothing I had to do!  Do you ever feel that way?

With shows and special orders out of the way for a while, I decided to tackle a “home” project…our family room.  When we moved in here (just over a year ago), the family room was the room where we put everything that we couldn’t figure out another place for…it became the dumping ground.  The kids used the room because it was where the TV was, but I almost never went in there, even to watch a movie…I hated everything about it!

So in the past few weeks, it has been my happy-although-at-times-frustrating task to make it in to a more useable, functional, and pretty place for our family to use.  I’ll share some “before” pictures at another time, but for tonight, I just thought I’d share my one major “build” for this room.

I fell in love with Ana White’s Triple Printers Console plans when they first appeared more than a year ago.  It was one of the first items I “pinned” for inspiration to my Family Room Pinterest board (if you visit, you might find some other hints of what is going on in this room).

I knew I wanted a painted finish, however, more like the Pottery Barn Dawson Media Console, and this is what I ended up with (the picture above looks a little greener than real life, I think).  First I stained the whole cabinet with Rustoleum American Walnut stain, then I painted with a DIY chalk paint made with sample pot of Valspar Perfect Storm.  After some heavy distressing, I glazed it all with more stain, then used MMS wax in both regular and dark to protect it all.

This was a challenging build in some ways—namely, the cabinet doors.  There is more of a gap around them than I would like, but it doesn’t bother me as much now that I’ve lived with it for a while.  I discovered that you should NOT buy the cheapest hinges you can find because, well….they’re cheap.  At 22” wide, these door are heavy, and cheap hinges tend to sag…and there’s nothing you can do about it.  I may be a little bitter about that. 

One of the things that made this a simpler build, however, was that I splurged for Select Pine.  It’s significantly more expensive, but SO lovely and smooth—hardly any sanding required!  I still had to hunt…and hunt….and hunt some more (at two different stores)…to find straight 2x2’s, but once I did, it was easy to build nice and square with those perfect corners.

I omitted the center drawer and just put in a shelf to store the DVD player and the Wii console.  Then my other splurge was to buy three Flipworks DVD trays through Amazon.  Each rack screws directly onto the shelves, but then slides out so you can access all of your movies.  We have stored our DVDs in IKEA boxes for a long time, and you had to go through every box to find the movie you wanted (yes, I’d considered labeling the boxes, but there’s no point when you have 6 children who never put anything away properly).

I adore all the label pulls, which I purchased from D. Lawless Hardware (they are VERY reasonably priced!).  I really have no plans to put actual labels in them….I think they are pretty just the way they are!

This new console is really the focal point of the whole room, and it makes me happy every time I walk in there—a far cry from how I used to feel!  I am still anxious to get everything put together so I can show off the room, but it is coming together…piece by piece!

 

Thanks to Someday Crafts, Elizabeth & Co., My Repurposed Life, and Domestically Speaking for featuring this project!

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life