BESTÅ turns into play-centre

Materials: 2 BESTÅ units with 6 shelfs, 2 BESTÅ units with 1shelf, 2 drawers with front, 4 sets of large BESTÅ castors, 8 square doors, all white. Two MDF wooden plates, white paint, screwdrivers, screws, saw and lots of glue. Two white KRITTER chairs.

Description: In our L-shaped living room, we wanted our small kids (1 and 4) to play in the corner. The enormous amount of bright colored toys, which had been spread across the floor in the past few years should be stacked into sleek design cabinets which should be out of their reach, it should have little desks to draw their pictures on and little cabinets on wheels for their daily stuff to put into.

When we shopped around all cabinets for kids turned out to be bright colored, funny or otherwise not-sleek and therefore not suitable for our livingroom. I decided to hack the BESTÅ cabinet!

First we mounted one BESTÅ unit to the wall, against the ceiling. Note that the unit is temporarily supported by an old IKEA dresser with additional piles of magazines! It did a very good job.

Than we mounted a room-high MDF plate, mounted a second shelfunit (again with the help of the old dresser) and a second room-high MDF plate. Plates were mounted with lots of glue and a single screw.

Just for the look of it we thickened the plates by glueing extra plates on both sides of the room-high MDF plates. And to be sure the cabinets would not fall on our children's heads we put an extra rod underneath the first cabinet.

I sawed two little desks, mounted small bars underneath and screwed the bars against the plates. We sanded the plates and painted them white.

Eight doors were attached that opened by clicking (BESTÅ press-and-open! Superb!).

The two small BESTÅ cabinets got a drawer and 4 castors each and were shoved under the desks. Two KRITTER chairs completed the new play-centre.

We are very happy with the result, although I must say that a tidy play-centre still seems to be a matter of discipline.... !

~ Janine