This New Mom’s IKEA Shelf Hack Is as Simple as They Come

Without sacrificing personality.
Lydia Geisel Avatar
baby clohtes hanging from edge of a shelf

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Complicated furniture hacks are not exactly what you want to be doing when you’ve got a baby on the way. So when Christina Healy, the creative director at Holyoke Paper Co., an event stationery studio based in Zaragoza, Spain, was designing her now 3-week-old daughter’s room, the new mom chose the most straightforward upgrade possible. Her starting point? IKEA’s wholesome Flisat wall shelves

She could have painted the two plain wood storage units. She could have transformed them into something totally new (shoe storage, anyone?). Instead she simply added strips of leftover caning from a past project to the open bottoms. For almost no work at all, the end result is super-chic. What’s even more appealing about the whole thing (other than the fact that none of baby Chloé’s books will fall out) is that the pieces cost just $15 each. That beats buying a bulky bookcase by a long shot. Here, Healy breaks down her clever DIY for us.

The Supplies 

wood shelves with caning exterior
Photography by Christina Healy

The How-To

Don’t fully assemble the shelves—stop before you screw in the bar (the staple gun won’t fit in the nook otherwise). Cut the caning to size using kitchen scissors. “I tried to cut the width of the caning to fill in the exact space from left to right, so that it would come up right along the edges,” explains Healy. Giving yourself about a half inch of excess material to work with, staple one side along the center of the rod. Next, staple the caning to the bottom part of the shelf. Finish building the shelves and fill ’em up. There’s no doubt Healy has a bookworm in the making.

Flisat Shelf

Ikea
$15.0
 Shelf

Cane Webbing

Amazon
$13.0
 Roll caning

Kitchen Shears by Wüsthof

$50.0
 sheers

Staple Gun by Workpro

$35.0
 staple gun

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