apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I want face-out shelves for our kid, too, but our budget is really tight. I found a post on another site where a family used rain gutters as face out shelves. cheap diy; check it out: http://duaneco.blogs.com/duanecoblogs/2007/01/index.html

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If you look at school supply stores, you can also often find face-out bookcases. Some are even double-sided, so they can display twice as many books and may be used as room dividers.

I just wrote a blog entry on this; see my post entitled Storing and Displaying Children's Picture Books.

Martha Stewart's website has directions to make your own (of course!):
http://tinyurl.com/38gyxa

I plan to use some cheap wooden spice racks from IKEA for this purpose. I stained them and plan to mount them low on the wall where my son can easily reach them.

Thanks for this! I really love the rain gutter idea! I had originally wanted to make these shelves after having seen them in one of Martha's first baby magazines (sadly discontinued). Of course, they used a purchased plate rail that was no longer available... There is also a rather simple modern version in Judith Wilson's Babies Rooms from Zero to Three. Lately, we have been wondering about buying some aluminum trim that they sell in hardware stores here as a rail, perhaps adding those IKEA curtain wires stretched across to keep books in.

Here are 2 rather expensive versions of the aluminum rail idea that I have come across, in case anyone is interested -- http://www.stylegarage.com/products/accessories/al-picrail/al-picrail.shtml
http://www.stylegarage.com/products/accessories/st-picrail/st-picrail.shtml

We are considering the metal because we have no tools here in Switzerland (and it doesn't make sense for us to buy any), and we need something we can basically just affix to the wall.

The IKEA KLANG shelf is a cheaper (albeit not quite as nice) version of the style garage aluminium rail.

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/50072259

I havent actually used these yet but I think they would do the trick.

The KLANG shelf does indeed work. We did two to set out small-ish toys and books at toddler eye level for my daughter. We rotated toys and books in and out every couple of days to keep her interested. Literally she would walk into the living room and shout out whatever toy was on the shelf that day happily. Now that she's 3, she can get out toys herself and I don't think we have a place to hang the shelves, but maybe I'll figure something similar out for the next munchkin when he gets to be a toddler.