Shelving project (aka Viva IKEA)

I've been thinking about improving the storage capacity in our small spare room - used mostly as an office - for some time now. The big question was how. I would dearly have loved to put in a wall-mounted, fold-up bed with storage underneath as the single bed is used only occasionally by Dominic and Leonore (not at the same time). However, without going to the trouble of designing and building my own this was just going to be too expensive. In the end I plumped for wall-mounted shelves above the bed-head. This photo shows the location.

Proposed location of the shelving unit above the bed-head

Online research led me to the Besta range from IKEA from which I originally chose a single unit 120cm(l), 64cm(h), and 40cm(w) with 2 sets of 2 internal shelves. These units can be wall or floor mounted (on short feet or castors) so seemed ideal for the purpose. Having purchased and assembled the unit I decided that I could put another unit alongside it so purchased a similar unit but only half (60cm) the length.

Then it was a question of how best to fit them to the wall. They come with the furniture to suspend them from a wall but the problem I've always found is that the wall stud centres may not be accurately set at the normal 60cm so how to make sure that the weight (25kg for the larger unit) is properly and safely supported. I resorted to a solution that I have used in the past - fixing 45 x 20 mm battens to the wall first and then fixing the shelves to the battens. See photo below for the battens as fixed to the wall. Although the shelves are suspended from only the top batten, the lower one is needed to provide the necessary spacing of the bottom of the unit from the wall.

The support battens fixed to the wall

Having assembled the units and fixed the battens it was then a matter of 'how do I hold the shelves in place steadily enough while fixing them to the top batten?'. To do this I devised a cunning plan. At the lower back of each of the shelving units 45 mm up from the bottom, I affixed to each of the backs of the end pieces a small block of wood (actually some scrap 15mm ply). This then provided a place to rest the shelving unit on the lower batten while fixing the top with screws into the pre-drilled holes. So - no real effort to hold them in place while the screws were driven, just needing to push the top of the shelving unit horizontally against the wall and wallah! This series of photos shows the end result.

Both shelving units attached to the wall

I put a door on one unit to hide some of the messy stuff

Completed units with internal shelves installed. Another
shelf is supplied for the 'door' unit but isn't needed.

All up about 4 hours work including fixing the battens and assembling the units from flat-pack. Where would we be without IKEA?