Custom shoe rack and bench

Materials: Ikea PS, wooden board or Ikea countertop, wood batten, angle steel, screws, hardoil, table saw, belt sander, power drill

Description: My brother and I recently moved into a new apartment and needed a place to store our shoes. We also wanted a bench to sit on when putting our shoes on/off. One of the walls in the entrance area wasn't straight but bends a bit and couldn't be used for anything else like a regular cabinet or storage rack. Inspired by a hack posted in the bathroom section using Ikea PS we wanted to do something similar. Unfortunately the steel version was no longer available in Germany so we went with the white version of Ikea PS. Here is what we did:

First we set up the cabinet in the regular fashion but without the wheels. We then dug out an old piece of blockboard from our dads basement and used the table saw to saw it in the correct shape matching the curve of our designated wall. Afterwards we sanded down the old coating and smothed the edges. For added durability we then threw on a layer of hardoil.

Next we chose a height for the bench and mounted the board onto the walls using four large angle steels. Since it's a sheetrock wall we figured the angles wouldn't provide enough support in order to hold 2-3 persons sitting on the bench at the same time and screwed a couple of battens underneath the board so that they sit on the Ikea PS cabinet in the front part of the bench and take some weight of the angle steels. Using a bit of force and one person slightly pushing up against the the board we then pushed the cabinets underneath the blockboard. Since the battens didn't sit on the cabinet perfectly in all areas we used a few pieces of cardboard to even out the differences.

We are now very happy with this aesthetically pleasing, functional and relatively cheap (overall around $100 bucks) solution which can hold up to twelve pairs of shoes at the same time.

Thanks to our dad, our grandfather, Lorenz and Ikea hackers for being awesome and making this happen.

~ Lorenz and Julian, Berlin, Germany