• Home
  • about emily
  • before + after
  • HGTV + DIY Network
  • good press
  • contact
  • Let’s Organize These Posts:

    • Art Attack
    • Backyard
    • Barn
    • Basement
    • Bathroom
    • Beach
    • Bedrooms
    • Being Thrifty
    • Business-y
    • Buying and Renting and Selling
    • Casual Celebrations
    • Closets
    • Curb Appeal
    • Dainty Details
    • Deck
    • Decor
    • Dining Room
    • DIY
    • Dog-Related
    • Entryway
    • Flooring
    • For the Kids
    • Garage
    • Gardening
    • Helping The Economy
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects
    • Holiday-Related Projects
    • Home Safety
    • Kitchen
    • Lighting
    • Living Room
    • Merry Travels
    • Office Space
    • Organized
    • Other Pads
    • Outdoor Living
    • Scooter Fun
    • Stairwell
    • Sunroom
    • Supporting Sponsors
    • The Art Room
    • Tools
    • Uncategorizable
    • Wedding
    • Windows
    • Work-pads
  • Search

  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

  • BROWSE POSTS BY CATEGORY:

    • Art Attack (7)
    • Backyard (92)
    • Barn (8)
    • Basement (27)
    • Bathroom (43)
    • Beach (13)
    • Bedrooms (73)
    • Being Thrifty (53)
    • Business-y (12)
    • Buying and Renting and Selling (23)
    • Casual Celebrations (36)
    • Closets (17)
    • Curb Appeal (44)
    • Dainty Details (8)
    • Deck (23)
    • Decor (286)
    • Dining Room (37)
    • DIY (577)
    • Dog-Related (24)
    • Entryway (59)
    • Flooring (58)
    • For the Kids (32)
    • Garage (17)
    • Gardening (70)
    • Helping The Economy (30)
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects (283)
    • Holiday-Related Projects (80)
    • Home Safety (12)
    • Kitchen (83)
    • Lighting (31)
    • Living Room (77)
    • Merry Travels (21)
    • Office Space (21)
    • Organized (41)
    • Other Pads (14)
    • Outdoor Living (12)
    • Scooter Fun (8)
    • Stairwell (20)
    • Sunroom (22)
    • Supporting Sponsors (43)
    • The Art Room (3)
    • Tools (43)
    • Uncategorizable (1)
    • Wedding (28)
    • Windows (14)
    • Work-pads (10)
  • Search

  • Pages

    • blog
    • Good Press: Special Features, Freelance Projects, and Long-Term Clients
    • Privacy Policy
    • about emily
    • before + after
      • before + after – transforming my first home
      • before + after, our current home
    • contact me
    • choose a badge and share the merrypad.com love
  • Home
  • about emily
  • before + after
  • HGTV + DIY Network
  • good press
  • contact

Meet Lap

November 6, 2014

Hey Lap. No regrets, you’ve beyond exceeded my expectations… and your packaging exceeded that of my wildly creative children.

Adding Lap Shelving System to our dining room decor.

Figuring out how to furnish the big long walls in our house in a functional way has been an ongoing topic of conversation. It seems that we could find old sideboards and cute tables all day long, but big storage is harder to come by secondhand. The agreed upon direction until this point had been to install wall brackets and wall-to-wall shelves, a la classic midcentury design. We had been shopping ’round for a style a little classier than the common “closet system” that you’re probably thinking of, and maybe we’ll still end up following through with that style in another area of our home, but the very modular Lap Shelving System by Marina Bautier at Design Within Reach caught our eye, and ended up being literally the perfect fit for our dining room.

View of Lap Shelving System from the kitchen.

It arrived over the weekend and I had it assembled within hours, fueled by sheer excitement, Order of the Phoenix read aloud, and late night coffee; it’ll probably never be “perfectly staged” because I’m not all that good at that stuff but I figured I’d show you where we’re at anyways. It’s a great addition to our home, somewhere we can begin to once again store and display a collection of treasures and reads.

Lap shelving system, mid-assembly.

“No, Pete, I wanted you to stand next to the shelving. Don’t trip. Look thrilled.”

Pete standing for scale beside the Lap shelving system.

Sigh. It seems like 10x more toys when I see it in a photo.

As I assembled it, I spoke pretty enthusiastically and emphatically to Pete about how completely unlike IKEA it is. It’s not at all fair for me to compare the two because regardless of how many times I’ve encountered scratches and accidentally broken pegs, I still have a lot of good things to say about IKEA, but for many reasons–from delivery, to quality of packaging, to quality of material, to assembly instructions–this was much different. The frame is nothing like this one. The powder-coated metal shelves are noooothing like these. It’s easily the nicest thing we’ve invested in (thank god it was on sale) and even more than before, I hope it’s one of those anchor pieces that we have in our home forever… and maybe one day auto-focus will decide to pay attention on the correct object, since I’m making such a big deal about how freaking important it is to me. Dining room wall, check.

Lap shelving system in our dining room.

The beauty in a modular shelving unit like this is that it’s essentially a custom build, able to satisfy a range of height and width and storage requirements. That said, I totally copied the setup that they show on dwr.com with two medium units and one low unit:

Lap Shelving System inspiration from DWR.

Ours measures a total of 123″ long (10′-3″), as the unit we bought consists of one medium frame and a medium frame extension, plus a single low frame extension. Really, the only issue with assembling the frame that I ran into, is that the components don’t take into consideration pairing extensions of different heights, so I had to drill a couple of extra holes right where those arrows are pointing below (not a problem for me, I just matched up a drill bit and quadruple checked my drill marks… perhaps something you would want to be aware of if you’re in the market to buy this piece… I wouldn’t exactly say that needing to retrofit a unit like this would warrant an “A+” experience, but it came together exactly as it should, and I had enough hardware to do it right.)

Assembly instructions for the Lap Shelving System.

Also taking away from the A+ IMO: the low frame that I purchased was an extension, and it also has a set of extra holes on the far right side, the low frame end. I suppose I could have bought the full low frame (no extension) to avoid this but wasn’t aware it would be an issue. Fortunately due to our positioning, you would never, ever see these holes in person because it sits about 6″ from the wall, but it’s just another thing to note for future buyers. (If you’re buying extensions of all the same size, you would not have this issue.)

Speaking of holes for the pins and fittings, one thing that I really liked about this piece is that absolutely no holes are visible on the shelves; they are all hidden beneath where the shelving overlaps the frame (hence, “lap” shelving), meaning when you have a tall unit, you’ll never be looking upwards towards visible joinery. It’s a nice touch.

Hidden joinery in the Lap Shelving System.

The design aspect that really sold me on this piece was the modularity of the shelves themselves. Each individual shelf is sold separately, in addition to the main shelving system. It’s a little bit of an oof until you realize how much you appreciate being able to customize to your wants. Not a single one of them is permanent. They are all heavy, powder-coated white metal and overlap the oak frame (and those joinery holes) to sit in place. The shelves aren’t attached with hardware, and therefore can be reorganized and adjusted to fit our (assumably) evolving storage needs, which I think is pretty cool – cool enough to almost make me want to buy extra puzzle pieces just so I have flexibility beyond what I purchased, but that’s crazy-talk for me at this price point.

I liked the concept and presentation of having “boxes” in a shelving unit, so I bought two deep boxes, used for the time being as a catch-all for kid books, and therefore installed on a lower shelf so that items are easily within reach. Each box takes up 1/3 of a shelf expanse, so the other 2/3 is filled with a small flat shelf.

Kids toys stored in deep boxes in the Lap Shelving Unit.

I bought three shallow boxes too, intended to sit 3-up side by side for storage.

I’ll have to figure out how to use these shallow boxes, but for now they store assorted maps that I intend to frame, some notebooks for work, and a few magazines that I’ve been featured in over the last year or so (peek-a-boo, and no that’s not my face emerging).

Lap shelving system set of three shallow boxes.

Tray shelves and bookshelves were other add-ons I purchased, three of each that could be used interchangeably anywhere on the unit. I also bought four large flat shelves, because at the price it was discounted to, it made sense to buy more of those than other items. All four are backordered for a few more weeks, but they will line the bottom-most set of shelving along the floor, primarily for ease of dusting. For what it’s worth, you could probably go completely without accessorizing the bottom set of shelves at ground-level and let it be a bare wood frame (I’m only saying that because ours have been empty for almost a week now, and I don’t even notice the absence of shelving).

Lap shelving system installed in our dining room.

“Styling” will continue. Hey look, I finally have a place for this guy!

Lovesac modern birdhouse on the lap shelving system.

I’ll wrap it up by sharing a few ordering efficiencies which, all in, saved me a few hundred dollars:

  • Choosing to integrate a low extension rather than another medium extension saved a bunch of money; because the full unit would run the length of my wall, going shorty on one end also opened up some vertical space for hanging art, which we have line of sight to from the kitchen (see the second photo above; and that pegboard was a recent project for DIY Network).
  • I considered going with the tall shelves. Good thing I didn’t, because they would have dwarfed our window.
  • The flat shelves cost less than the tray and bookshelves, so I chose to use a few more of those instead of investing in additional higher-cost add-ons.
  • The shallow boxes cost less than the deep boxes, so I bought three shallow units, and just two deep.
  • The deep boxes I paired with the small flat shelves, which was cost effective but I also thought would flow more nicely than trying to integrate a small tray shelf.

If you’re looking to buy this system and have any questions that I haven’t touched upon, leave a comment or send me a note. So far, so good over here, but I’m sure we’ll learn things about organizing this system and perfecting its uses over time.

Share

Decor  / Dining Room  / Organized

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

7 Comments


Bill
November 6, 2014 at 10:30 pm
Reply

Is your self unit anchored to the wall? I’m having a flashback to the first grade when a big terra cotta plant just missed me when a kid climbed the shelf to get one of those big green pencils in a box. After that the shelf was wired to the wall!!



    Emily
    November 7, 2014 at 8:00 am

    I’m always thinking about that too. I’ve done some aggressive test pulls at it to see how it performs (so far, no problem) but yes, wiring it will be a good step to take as our infant grows more mobile. (Bet the teacher moved that big terra cotta planter too!)

Cait
November 7, 2014 at 1:37 pm
Reply

Hi Lap! :)

The shelves fit so nicely in your dining room! (And of course they look fantastic!)



Jon
December 3, 2014 at 10:33 pm
Reply

Hi Emily,
I’m about to buy a tall + tall extension, but in looking through all the product images I could find, I’ve never seen a shelf full of books and seeing how the shelves are constructed I’m curious about their structural integrity. Have you filled any of your bookshelves fully across? Was a weight limit mentioned in the instructions?
Thanks,
Jon



    Emily
    December 4, 2014 at 10:10 pm

    100% confident that they would hold books… I don’t recall seeing a weight limit, but the metal is super thick, and the way the shelves overlap the frame makes it very solid and not likely at all to warp. The bookshelf and flat shelf lap the frame a little differently, but both shelf designs seem very sound. You’ll love it.

Kathryn
January 25, 2018 at 5:37 pm
Reply

Hi!! I was so excited to see pictures of these shelves in someone’s home. I think I am going to pull the trigger on some for my own house. I’ve been looking for shelves that were 30″ish tall, but long. It’s been harder than I imagined. There is one photo that shows the shelving against the floor. Did you buy shelves for the bottom-most level or did you leave that open? I will be going with the black shelves and I’ve got a white dog that sheds all over, all the time.



    Emily
    January 30, 2018 at 12:48 pm

    Hi Kathryn! I’m glad you like them. They’re still awesome in our home. I did buy the shelves for the lower level… it feels more finished that way, even though the dog fur did need to be cleaned out pretty often. I hope you love it!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

  • Instagram

    merrypad

    Merrypad by Emily Fazio
    Instagram post 17902304861708711 Instagram post 17902304861708711
    Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️ Highly recco mining those #herkimerdiamonds ✌️
    Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garl Pt. 2: Well before Halloween, the last of the garlic went into the home garden: 10 rows [L>R] 6 whole Nootka Rose as an experiment, 3x8 Mennonite-grown cloves from Aman’s, and 6x8 (and, I think, total 112? notes are cryptic) “normal.”
#gardennotes #growinggarlic #garden2023 #whatisnormal #merrypadathome
    Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of Out of sight but [documented so it’s] not out of mind! #garden2024 kicks off with my favorite biennial: elephant garlic! 15 cloves planted from small, to medium, to enormous. #gardennotes
    Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this i Annual garlic notes for #garden2023, pt. 1: this is getting ooc, and I love it. 👩‍🌾🧑‍🌾

🧄 65% of the planting is in a new plot in the country. 🧄 Seeing if NR grows bigger with more sunlight. 🧄 Big @chasefarms cloves from 2021 were really productive in our home garden; can’t wait to see how they can show up next year in the new space. 🧄

Hand-turned a small bed, but big thanks to my sister, who rolled into town just in time to help me double its size (and did not complain once).
    One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stal One straggler from #garlic2021 debuted with 7 stalks and 7 scapes, and I can’t wait to see this mammoth looks like when it’s pulled next month. #garlic2022 

Also, fierce springtime performance by parsley, chamomile, and self-seeded cilantro.
    Annual garlic notes #garden2022 ~315 cloves total Annual garlic notes #garden2022
~315 cloves total
50 in new, unfenced garden
Still need thick mulch on everything
Did a terrible job tracking varieties when I harvested, so it’s all a mix of hardneck now 😒
Added some big cloves from @chasefarms and look forward to adding some @fruition_seeds in #garden2023 when @porterfarmscsa delivers.
    Load More... follow emily: @merrypad



  • Like Us On Facebook

    Facebook Pagelike Widget



  • Popular Posts

    • How to fix an IKEA drawer. The Easy Fix For Broken IKEA Drawers 66.9k views
    • DIY sideboard rehab. 7 Steps for Restoring an Old Midcentury Sideboard Buffet 56.8k views
    • How to design and make a barn quilt. How to Make Your Own Barn Quilt 50k views
    • How to hang art on brick surfaces using specialty clips. The Easy Way to Hang Art on Brick or Stone 40.1k views
    • DIY driveway removal. How to Remove an Old Asphalt Driveway 35.1k views
    • Our DIY flagstone patio. Building a Flagstone Patio in One Day 32.8k views
    • Tips for dying pasta different colors, and a Halloween Recipe for the kids. How to Dye Pasta Different Colors (Halloween Recipe) 32.5k views
    • Fix an ikea dresser drawer. Life Support For An IKEA Dresser 29.7k views
    • Goodbye, gold fireplace covering. Less Is More: How to Remove a Fireplace Surround 29.5k views
    • After: Custom wooden garden fence. Designing a Durable Wooden Fence For Our Beautiful Backyard Garden 23k views



  • BROWSE POSTS BY CATEGORY:

    • Art Attack (7)
    • Backyard (92)
    • Barn (8)
    • Basement (27)
    • Bathroom (43)
    • Beach (13)
    • Bedrooms (73)
    • Being Thrifty (53)
    • Business-y (12)
    • Buying and Renting and Selling (23)
    • Casual Celebrations (36)
    • Closets (17)
    • Curb Appeal (44)
    • Dainty Details (8)
    • Deck (23)
    • Decor (286)
    • Dining Room (37)
    • DIY (577)
    • Dog-Related (24)
    • Entryway (59)
    • Flooring (58)
    • For the Kids (32)
    • Garage (17)
    • Gardening (70)
    • Helping The Economy (30)
    • HGTV + DIY Network Projects (283)
    • Holiday-Related Projects (80)
    • Home Safety (12)
    • Kitchen (83)
    • Lighting (31)
    • Living Room (77)
    • Merry Travels (21)
    • Office Space (21)
    • Organized (41)
    • Other Pads (14)
    • Outdoor Living (12)
    • Scooter Fun (8)
    • Stairwell (20)
    • Sunroom (22)
    • Supporting Sponsors (43)
    • The Art Room (3)
    • Tools (43)
    • Uncategorizable (1)
    • Wedding (28)
    • Windows (14)
    • Work-pads (10)





  • a little bit of everything, friends, DIY, and inspiration

    • Dadand.com < My husband and his BFF
    • HGTV
  • Some Legal

    Merrypad incorporates the occasional affiliate link to Amazon.com and Minted; we link to many other websites and products, but if it is in context of a paid sponsorship, it is always noted as such. Please review the privacy policy and contact me if you have any additional questions.

    Theme customized by Pete Fazio Creative, the guy from dadand.com.


© Copyright Merrypad