Expedit shelves + countertop = optimized work station for long but narrow room

Materials: Expedit shelving units (2 times 2x2, 1 time 2x4), customized countertop, Expedit inserts for 2 drawers, Skubb boxes

Description: We have a long (~4 m) but very narrow (~1.65 m) room in our flat, which has to satisfy a lot of different functions. The first part of the room was already equipped with our cloakroom, but a workspace was missing (including 2 huge printers/scanner) and most important a lot of storage space for household stuff such as flat iron, bottles, tools, towels etc.

First we tried to cope with an old Vika Amon desk (60x120 cm)and an even older Billy (60x202 cm), but that didn't work fine as we were always annoyed at the legs of the desk which got in the way when we wanted to grab something from the lower part of the shelf. Furthermore, there was a lot of unused space.

So we decided to go for something new. We chose Expedit shelves to be our storage space as they come in a variety of formats, can be equipped with shelves, doors and boxes and look clean and modern. At our home improvement store we bought a customized countertop (165x79x2 cm), which cost about 40€ and matched the colour of our Expedits, and fastened it at each side with screws on a 2x2 and a 2x4 Expedit, respectively.

Then we added a second 2x2 Expedit on top of the first (with the countertop in between) to make use of the room's height. Again, we fastened it with screws to be more stable. Finally, we added drawers and boxes to our Expedits and put in all that stuff we didn't know where to store before.

We are pretty happy with the result that uses our available space perfectly, looks both neat and clean and can be easily extended if necessary.

~ Heike, Munich, Germany