We bought the IKEA LAIVA shelving unit for our kitchen storage, but found that in its present form, it had several flaws:
Firstly, the height of each compartment meant that a lot of space would go unused.
Secondly, by default, two of the four compartments come without a back panel. If you can’t position the shelf directly against a wall, there’s always the risk of things being pushed off the back.
IKEA LAIVA hack for kitchen storage
Materials:
To fix these two issues, we bought a second LAIVA shelving unit.
We then used the shelves of the second unit to divide each compartment into two.
Instead of measuring the exact half, we decided (for purely aesthetic reasons) that the additional shelves should line up with the horizontal stripes of the back panel.
So, one compartment is always slightly larger than the other, but just barely so.
We then attached the remaining back panels to close the gaps.
Our LAIVA hack now offers the perfect storage for all our day-to-day crockery.
We used the bits and pieces included by IKEA; the only extra tool we needed was a drill for the additional holes.
It would be interesting to read if IKEA hackers out there have come up with ideas for the two leftover side pieces from the second pack that we didn’t use.
~ by Muyserin, Dresden, Germany
NEXT: See more IKEA shelving hacks
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