Dressing up Metro-type shelving

[Kouign Aman]

Can the floor handle a fully loaded unit, the way you are planning to load it?

I made shelves out of plexiglass, not to hide the look of the unit I have.

more data needed - do you want to hide the stuff stored on the shelves, or just hide the look of the shelving, but keep the kitchen stuff visible?

If the former, try curtains or roller blinds. Cheaper than an armoire (tho you can get armoires for very little these days - they kinda hit their style heyday, and some folks are moving on.).

Or put up "edges" on the shelves. Maybe upside down crownmolding would do.

[andiesenji]

With the casters the weight rating is considerably less. The casters can handle heavier loads but the threaded collar inside the bottom of the uprights, into which they fit, cannot.

I can assure you from personal experience that they will bend and the unit will tip.

Was it one of these?

No. The ones I have appear heavier. The ones I have are the same thing that Sam's Club and Costco uses in their stores to hold temporary items.

It says Torrance, CA on the rail.

Edited May 3, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[OliverB]

I'm not quite sure I get this, you want to dress up the shelves so you can store kitchen appliances on them - in the living room? I don't think a gold plated diamond crusted shelf unit would make mixers and blenders look good enough for the living room

I don't know your style of furniture, but I'd either get a modern or an antique closet and install some shelving inside. If you get an old massive one, you should even be fine by just fitting wooden shelves inside, or maybe something like the elfa line of shelving sold at the container store. Might need some extra bracing, but so would the floor of the unit if you intend to park a couple hundred pounds of shelving (at 11lb) and appliances on it. The elfa stuff has the benefit of really easy adjustable shelving and all kinds of neat extras like little baskets for smaller things that hang of just one of the vertical parts. I just bought some to replace the industrial shelves in my pantry with a much narrower wall unit. Too much stuff gets lost and forgotten in the back of the shelves, being able to not go any deeper than two large cans of tomato hopefully helps me to avoid the purge of out of date things.....

[tirgoddess]

Have you looked at the storage at Ikea? Pretty reasonably priced and a lot of their stuff can be painted...~Maria

[Fat Guy]

I think so far the idea of building metro shelves into an old armoire is the most likely to succeed for me, if I do undertake such a project (which I may not need to).

[andiesenji]

I'm not quite sure I get this, you want to dress up the shelves so you can store kitchen appliances on them - in the living room? I don't think a gold plated diamond crusted shelf unit would make mixers and blenders look good enough for the living room

I don't know your style of furniture, but I'd either get a modern or an antique closet and install some shelving inside. If you get an old massive one, you should even be fine by just fitting wooden shelves inside, or maybe something like the elfa line of shelving sold at the container store. Might need some extra bracing, but so would the floor of the unit if you intend to park a couple hundred pounds of shelving (at 11lb) and appliances on it. The elfa stuff has the benefit of really easy adjustable shelving and all kinds of neat extras like little baskets for smaller things that hang of just one of the vertical parts. I just bought some to replace the industrial shelves in my pantry with a much narrower wall unit. Too much stuff gets lost and forgotten in the back of the shelves, being able to not go any deeper than two large cans of tomato hopefully helps me to avoid the purge of out of date things.....

The shelving unit will rest on the floor with just the top, sides and front fastened to it.

I know of one person who has one of the half height shelving units inside the shell of a Chinese lacquer cabinet - her entire condo is furnished in Asian design furniture that had been used in movies and purchased at one of the studio auctions.

The interior of the Chinese cabinet was damaged when bottles of wine stored inside broke.