Exact size IVAR shelf system

My Mom knows that I am good with the IVAR system. Every time she is at our house, she is asking me how did I do this, how did I do that… And when she wanted an exact size shelf system for her teeny living room I simply could not say no. But how to develop something from a modular system which has its sizes and limits?

I will show you in this post…

Exact size IVAR shelf system

First problem is, my Mom has an old couch 150 centimetres in length and she wants to put it under the shelf. With the IVAR system, the the longest distance we can bridge is 80-84 centimetres. These are the maximum lengths of the shelves IVAR system has with 30 or 50 centimetres width.

But we have to bridge 150 centimetres above the couch somehow.

The IVAR system has side elements with different heights, the tallest one is 226 centimetres. Mostly we do not think in 3D and we do not realize, that one dimension can be transformed to another. If we rotated a side element, we got a 226 centimetres long bridge. The problem is that all the things that we want to store on it will fall down. Until we get two IVAR shelves and a screwdriver. With them we will have a strong bridge. The skeleton of the bridge is the side element (ladders) and the shelves will hold our stuff from falling.

Customized IVAR shelf system

All we have to do is to cut the ladder for the size we need to bridge and cut the shelves too. To hold the bridge we used the end of the shelves which have built in holders. The biggest distance we can bridge with this solution is ~230 centimetres. For my Mom’s system I needed two ladder and 4 shelves. Put together we are done. Two side unit and two hacked side unit makes a shelf with 226 centimetres height, 30 centimetres width and 150 centimetres length.

Exact size IVAR shelf system

Next problem is, that my Mom’s living room is too small for a normal system and at the corner we cannot use a normal IVAR corner shelf.  This corner shelf is not easily variable, it has to fit in the system with the built in holders. But with a little patience, we can pull out those metal rails, then cut the shelf and at the end push back the rails. After this operation we will have a corner shelf with exact dimensions we need. And it fits with the system too. I needed 3 of them, I had 3 operations were completed in 3 hours.

Exact size IVAR shelf system

Put the hacked IVAR shelf togedther my Mom got an exact size system which utilizes the whole space she has in her livingroom.

Exact size IVAR shelf system

Hope you like it!

To be continued…