Designer challenge

Photographs: (Ward portrait) Tom Tinervin; (Ward stills) Diana Sonis

Jennifer Ward
Children’s interior-design consultant (minordetailsnyc.com)

What she had: Seven Ikea trash cans

What she made: A shoe rack

Why she did it: Ward, who works with children (and their toys), always has storage on the brain. “I came up with this shoe rack,” she says, “but you could also raise the unit and use it as wall-mounted toy cubbies, with hooks for coats attached at the bottom.”

How she did it: First, she laid out the bins on a large piece of craft paper, with four on the bottom row and three on the top, and traced the bases to create a template. Then she taped it to the wall to make sure it fit and to give herself basic drilling guidelines (two inches from the top center, and from the left and right edges of each can). Next, she drilled the holes, removed the template, installed the anchors and drilled the screws into place from inside of each can.

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