Francesca's steel shoe rack

Shoe lover Francesca hacks a shoe rack that offers plenty of storage and doesn't cost a lot.

She says, "Well, everything started with the fact that I did need a place to put myshoes in and, like every Italian girl, I've got plenty of shoes! This made the traditional furniture for shoes completely useless, unless I was ready to pay a fortune (and of course I wasn't :)...thus I thought to have a look at what Ikea had to offer and, "ecco fatto", I found exactly what I was looking for.

At Milano-Carugate Ikea I've bought two pieces of Hyllis, a 4-level steel shelf really cheap (not even 10,00 euros each!) and about 5 meters of Gisela fabric (about 5,00 euro per meter), the one with huge colored squares on it (but of course I've just tried to find a fabric which could suit the other colors of the room, there are a lot of different kind of fabric to choose from!)

I put together the shelves, and trust me it was quite an easy job. I assembled the shelves, paying attention not to screw in all the screws... I left the ones on the vertical elements (let's say the ones on the legs of the shelf) free from any screws, and you will soon understand why.

I then took the fabric and covered 3 of the 4 sides, overstretching the fabric, aiming to have the best result. And then, to block it, I screwed in the rest of the screws and, voil�!, here you see the nice result!

After repeating the procedure a second time for the second piece of Hyllis, I decided that it was better to cover also the front of shelves, and this is what I did: I used one of the traditional curtain-holder by Ikea (Index 70x120cm) and hung what was left from the Gisela fabric, exactly like a window curtain. I like the results!"