The bedroom makeover continues! After I finished the new bathroom door, we started trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the room. This wall, to the left of the entry door, was in our sights. Because of the many doors in the room, the bed has to stay on its current wall. But this wall is pretty flexible. It only held my vanity, which I never use these days, and our laundry basket, and it was time for a change.
Every room in my house is a collaboration. I’m usually the one who suggests ideas, then Steven tells me which ones he likes, and sometimes helps execute them. In our bedroom, though, bookshelves on this wall next to the entry door was his idea.
I had thought of a bookshelf on this wall, but I dismissed the idea because I was worried that it would make our room feel smaller. He was really into it, though, so I set off to find some inspiration.
To make the best use of the space, wall-mounted shelves seemed like they’d make the most sense. They would allow us to fit the shelves to the slope of the roof.
The more examples I looked at, the more I liked track shelves. Especially on white walls, the tracks pretty much disappear.
Track shelves would also be the quickest, easiest, and least expensive solution. And they can look surprisingly chic, don’t you think?
They’re quite flexible for a lot of different styles, too. It all depends on what you put on them.
Track shelves it is then! Time to find the studs. Oh, and figure out which shelves to get.
Track Shelves
There seem to be a couple of main options for track shelves. There are super high end ones, which I didn’t even bother looking at. Then there shelves from Elfa, available at The Container Store, ones made by Rubbermaid or ClosetMaid, available at big box stores, or an Ikea version. Yes, they’re mostly marketed for use in closets.
Since these are going on a bedroom wall, and not in a closet, I thought it might be worth it to spring for the “nicer” (more expensive) track shelves from Elfa. But when we went to our local Container Store and talked to a closet designer, we found that with the way the Elfa shelves are constructed, they wouldn’t be a good fit for this project. The shelves end where the tracks end, and we wanted the shelves to extend along the entire length of the wall. I could have used wall anchors to put the tracks where I wanted the shelves to end, but it didn’t seem worth it.
So no Elfa for us. And I didn’t want to deal with going to Ikea, and being stuck with only their unique proprietary brackets and hardware. According to a few sites I read (this one and this one), the Rubbermaid, ClosetMaid, and Elfa tracks and brackets are actually compatible with one another. And the quality isn’t significantly different, at least not for the components we were getting.
So off to the hardware store we went. We found Rubbermaid tracks, but ran into a supply-chain issue with the brackets and shelves. We were thinking that we’d get the 10″ deep shelves, but the only ones they had were the 12″ depth. And they didn’t have the corresponding brackets. So we just got the 12″-deep shelves, and the shorter brackets, and it was fine. (Ironically, now the only brackets I can find online are the longer ones.) But the lesson here is that it pays to be flexible with the details sometimes. Especially when the global supply chain is severely compromised.
Thanks to an inaccurate level, it took way longer to get the shelves up than I expected, but they’re all installed now. (If anyone asks, I need a new level for Mother’s Day. A laser level would be nice.)
I didn’t take any photos before we started filling them with books, so I only have a little teaser before the fully-styled room reveal. Definitely not as pretty yet as the inspiration photos, but hopefully they’ll get closer.
