KALLAX Hide-away TV & Cascading Room Divider

I recently got myself an open studio loft, so I finally had a chance to get creative. I wanted to share my massive IKEA KALLAX room divider, but more specifically, my hide-away TV that doubles as an art piece (with the added feature of allowing me to choose to watch TV in the living room or the bed room).

Ingredients:

• KALLAX 5×5 (primary)
• 2x KALLAX 2×4
• KALLAX 2.5×4
• KALLAX 4×4
• BESTÅ 2×1
• Various KALLAX accessories

Room Divider

The first goal of the project was to make a room divider to divide the living space from the bed area and utilize the height of the apartment. Overall the concept was easy and mostly just required me to go on several Craigslist runs to acquire my Tetris pieces. The core is a standard 5×5 KALLAX with other KALLAX pieces anchored to it. Having each piece anchored together along with the right-angles they form makes the structure safe and sturdy despite its height.

View from living room

View from bedroom

TV Insert

I knew I wanted my TV to be embedded in the KALLAX, but the 5×5 model that IKEA sells with a TV cut-out is centered, which would not work with the arrangement I wanted for the KALLAX components. I was able to find a good deal on a standard 5×5 and then it was as simple as selecting the one shelf to cut and removing the spare shelves from that region.

Hide-away TV (& Viewing in 2 rooms)

Now that I had the spot for my TV cut-out, I wanted a way to hide my TV so it wasn’t the center-point of the living space as you walked in. In addition, I was looking for an easy way to switch between playing video games on the couch and watching movies from the bed — so the only natural thing was to build in a swivel that would let me do both!

1. I acquired a standard low-profile lazy susan from Amazon and centered it on the shelf that the TV would rest on.

2. Then, I re-used the leftover shelf piece that was cut and I trimmed it further so that it could spin on the lazy susan without hitting the edges of the nook.

3. A 1-inch diameter hole was then drilled through the center of both shelves to pipe the various cords through the center of the rotation point to make things spin cleaner.

4. A cheap wall bracket was mounted to the TV, and I used an extra piece of thin plywood to act as a backing “wall” for the TV and art to go on the other side.

5. The final step was to adjust the mounting bracket and hang the art up on the back of the TV to make sure it all spins correctly and it was properly aligned. The addition of this bracket makes alignment and access to wires behind the TV a snap if needed.

Lots of fun doing this project, plus it looks great and is functional for my living space — all I was hoping for. Hope you like the project and please let me know if you have any questions!

~ by Blake Reeves

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