Post #607856 by Luki on Fri, Sep 23, 2011 3:35 PM

Thanks everybody for the feedback.

Somebody asked me how I did the shelves, so here's what I did.

The shelves are Lack shelves from Ikea (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60103750/). The big base cabinet in the middle is also from Ikea, but it's quite a few years old and I don't think they make it anymore.

So for the shelves, I bought some moldings from Bosko, ordering a bit more than the total length I knew I'd need.

I got the "grass skirt" stuff from Party City at the beginning of the summer products season. It was called "Rafia Table Mini-Skirt". I used an electric staple gun to staple the braided edge around the front and two sides of the shelves.

Then I cut the molding to the lengths I needed. Since I was doing this alone, it was a bit tricky to get the molding to press the skirt grass down over the front so that it would come out how I wanted, so I laid the molding on top of the shelf (I had it resting on a couple of small garbage cans) and then slid it down over the front and, while holding it in place, tilted everything back up on the shelf's back edge.

The moldings are about 2" taller than the shelves, so I positioned it all so that about 1" went below and 1" went above. I did this because I knew I'd be adding the lighting and I didn't want to see it, just the effect of it.

The lights are also from Ikea. I was being kind of picky about the color and couldn't find any rope lights that I liked, so I got these Dioder LEDs from Ikea (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20119418/) (just reduced in price, btw!). They're great because they're LED, so they don't get hot of course, plus they're very low profile. They also string together with included connectors so they're great for this kind of application because you can control the length pretty easily to suit your space.

But the lights are white, so I got some automotive amber film with an adhesive backing, and cut it into strips, then wrapped the strips around each light segment. The lights also come with these little screw-down mounting clips so they hold in place. I put them right along the inside edge of the molding.

The only other thing I did with the shelves was get some basic L-brackets and screw them into the studs right under the shelf (the shelves have their own hidden brackets, but I was worried about the load rating). I covered the brackets with the tiki masks you see, and also put the wires from the lighting behind the masks. so that you can't see any of the wiring.

The matting and bamboo trim all came from AmaZulu (and I've had very good experiences with them). The matting is a combination of bac-bac, 180-weave and seagrass mat. The bamboo is "mahogany" bamboo slat trim. I did not follow conventional wisdom at first, and nailed directly through the bamboo. A few of them split, but I didn't really think it messed with the look too much.

I think each shelf took a total of about an hour to do, although it was spread out over weeks because I didn't have everything together when I started.