Materials: Expedit; 2 Expedit 4x4, 3 Expedit 4x2, 1 Expedit 2x2 , drill machine, circular saw and/or jigsaw, glue, drape fabric, 4 planks/timber of about 5x4x35 cm
Description: The objective was a book shelf that should fill out a whole wall of our living room. Regrettably the combination of two Expedit 4x4 and one unit of 4x2 was a few centimeters too wide to fit between the two limiting walls.
Therefore the 2x4 Expedit placed between the two 4x4 units was shortened, so was the 2x2 Expedit above (placed between two 2x4 units (constituting the second level).
The problem with this is, that the lateral boards of Expedit are hollow and filled with cardboard, only the cohering ends are massive.
1. Assembly of the 4x4 and two 2x4 units, gluing the 2x4 horizontally over the 4x4 Expedit each.
2. Shorting of the upper and lower outer board of the "middle section" 2x2 and 4x4 Expedits.
3. Glue a fitted plank/piece of timber to fill the hollow part of the shortened boards at their ends to give them more stability.
4. Drill new holes (through the weight carrying plank/timber glued in before)
5. I choose, as to avoid too much complications (and tricky work) to not mount the vertical inner separation boards but instead only mounted one horizontal element in the 4x2 Expedit.
To hide the holes Ikea drilled to mount the other inner boards, I mounted the other boards inside out, for the holes to be hidden, when finally aligned with the other two sections.
6. I stapled a drape sheet on the wall facing side of the modules as there is a ca. 5cm gap between the wall and the shelf.
7. I can only advise to use threaded rods to fix this thing to a wall, as the Ikea provided fittings in themselves are not adaptive enough to mount this thing to a wall in a lean, straight fashion. I tried it first but the result was a mess, or at least not sufficient to my expectations.
I like to thank my fellow Austrian Ikeahacker named Martina, her description of an Expedit hacked into a hamster cage was a great help in realizing this project.
~ raoul, tulln, lower austria
