Alright guys, back down to that basement. Maybe now it makes a bit more sense as to why we are tackling our storage problem? We need to clear out our office/guest bedroom to make a nursery for baby sprout! So not only do we need to better organize what was already down in that storage space, but we need to add a lot to it, too!
So you saw how we planned and then cleared out and painted the space at the bottom of our basement stairs.
Next up was a big trip to IKEA to get all of the pieces of the Algot system we were going to need. This ended up turning into two trips. We brought our measurements with us, and then on that first trip checked out the system, understood how it worked, and tried to plan in the store (using those really little pencils they have!). Inevitably we got too few of some parts and too many of others. No biggie though, a second trip later (in mid-install) and we were fine.
I didn’t do a super great job of taking photos of the Algot install (whoops! got too caught up in getting ‘er done!), but it’s really pretty simple. First step is to drill in these long rails straight into the wall where you want to hang your shelves or drawers – best to get them into studs and to use heavy duty drywall anchors.
Then you insert brackets along the rails, and click your shelves or drawers into them. There are a few different depths and lengths of shelves, so you can really customize for what works best in your space. We went with a mixture of long deep shelves on the back (turquoise) wall, and then shorter/narrower shelves and drawers on the side wall.
Ignore the stuff we stuck on the shelves as we were putting them up – it was half because I just wanted them off the floor to walk around, and half because we were testing to see how high we wanted the space between the shelves to be.
You can see in the next photo that we left some room to the left of the shelves on the turquoise wall. This was partly because that bulkhead stuck out, making it tricky to get the shelves to fit into the whole space, and partly because I knew we were going to need a little nook for our brooms and vacuum.
Here is that side wall during our install. We were testing out the heights of spray paints and small paint pots to ensure we got the height of those shelves right. Need to maximise that space, yo!
When you first click in the brackets that the shelves or drawers slide into, you can see that they look pretty rough and unfinished (look at the higher bracket compared the one underneath in the photo below).
Well of course IKEA thinks of everything, so they come with these great little caps that snap on and finish the whole look off.
Too. much. paint.
So there are the beginnings of the install. We need to move that wooden shelving unit out of the space (it’s off to live in our furnace room for storage for our tenant), and set up a new armoire in its place. Since we have our “formal wear” (as long as I got my suit and tie…) in our guest room closet, we need to move that somewhere. See, I told you we’re having to squeeze a lot in here? And then I really need to properly organize the space – bins, and labels, and order, oh my!
Have you guys used the Algot system before? Or any other IKEA storage units? They really are pretty great and making it simple, adjustable, and attractive.