DIY loft style shelving

What is the loft style and what is the secret of its attractiveness for modern designers and customers? Consider the option of creating a shelving unit with your own hands in an industrial style.

Features of the LOFT style

Loft is a type of minimalist interior style that appeared in the United States in the 1940s in industrial studios and apartments in New York. At that time, many owners were forced to abandon their city properties due to sharp increases in taxes and land prices. Bohemian artists, musicians, and actors moved into industrial workshops and spacious halls of abandoned factories. For them, this was a cheap option for living, and they provided the furniture and decoration themselves from improvised means.

A loft is a space of a former workshop, factory or factory floor, converted into an apartment or creative studio. The style has caught on and gained great popularity thanks to a fresh look at familiar surroundings, the ability to use irrelevant and unnecessary materials, often free. Today, elite mansions and offices, apartments in skyscrapers and cottages are decorated in the loft spirit.

A loft gives any home coziness and a certain mood of expediency, practicality and elegant simplicity.For decoration, iron and wood, rough painting are used, brick walls are varnished and not masked, and factory windows and walls remain in the same format, acquiring interesting and cozy accessories in the form of house plants and bookshelves.

REFERENCE! It is noteworthy that most furnishings can be made independently with minimal carpentry skills.

What is needed to assemble loft-style furniture

Do you want to furnish your home with loft-inspired furniture? You can start with a simple option - for example, assembling a practical and reliable rack with your own hands. The main materials are wood and material in varying proportions. Sometimes a concrete element or rough-hewn stones are used in the interior. Plastic and any artificial materials that negate the entire spirit of the loft are contraindicated.

There are a lot of options for such racks. Also suitable for a novice craftsman is a bookcase, a simple table - a dining room or coffee table, or a compact ottoman. Chairs, lamps, bedside tables or other accessories are usually made using welding and forging, but it all depends on the tastes of the owner of the home.

What materials should I use? Most often, the necessary boards and other parts can be found in a landfill after major renovations in a neighbor's house. Cheapness, practicality, deliberate roughness, untreated surface - all this turns into magnificent exclusive designer items, which can often be seen in expensive stores under the name of famous designers.

ATTENTION! It is important to remember that the loft style will be successfully arranged only if individual pieces of furniture are combined with the overall style of the house.

The sequence of assembling the “skeleton”

A shelving unit is the largest piece of furniture in the house, large in size and accommodating a large amount of property. To create this structure, a metal “skeleton” is first created, which is then covered with wood.

First you need to decide on the type of rack you need:

• Corpus;
• Built-in;
• Semi-built;
• Diagonal;
• Trapezoidal, etc.

You can use an old ladder as a frame - it will be suitable for a high shelving unit. The surface is sanded, additional floors and levels are filled. An important detail of the cabinet is the presence of a pallet.

A cabinet with a metal frame is an excellent preparation for an open bookcase, onto which shelves are placed and attached. If you prefer a closed type of furniture, a metal base will allow you to variably place mezzanines and internal sections. Asymmetrically located shelves of different sizes, enclosed inside a simple rectangular frame, look interesting.

Final stage

The rack can be recycled from a used one - it is finished with new buttons and rivets, metal elements, and decorative nails. When ready, the cabinet can be covered with fabric and painted. A good idea is a closet with a passage, like on a combat submarine or ship. Sometimes just a few details are enough to change the look of an old thing.

After finishing the carpentry work, the rack can be coated with a special transparent carpentry varnish, which will protect the wood from dust and insect damage. Also, varnish will preserve the original “roughness” of the wood and emphasize the natural pattern of natural lines.

Recommendations

A few useful tips will help you stay on track in creating a new style in your home:

• To make the rack look original and interesting, you can use two different types of wood. The contrast of color and texture will only make the product stand out and attract attention.
• You should not use decorative excesses - flowers, waves, any decorations. Laconicism is the strong point of the loft. It is industrial and harsh, so romantic tender details are inappropriate here.
• The presence of a mirror adds practicality to the closet; the design in the shape of fragments will look especially original.
• The decor in the loft is acceptable in some places, but it should be in the spirit of industrial style. Doors can be made in the form of shutters, chest of drawers handles can be made in steampunk style, which goes well with the loft, but should not stand out too much.

We hope that these tips for introducing the loft style into your home will be useful and you will be able to create and highlight the beauty of an industrial space with your own hands, which has become a cozy home for the new owners.