Portis Shortening
Since we’ve swapped the laminate flooring in the lounge with a pale carpet we’ve started taking our shoes off at the door. So hence the need for a suitable shoe rack. I’d previously contemplated buying a couple of Ikea Lämplig trivets and welding up some kind of end brackets or buing some wooden bars and making one from scratch but concluded that it was rather more work that I wanted to take on at the moment.
Wandering around Ikea today there were a few different racks but they were all quite expensive. However we spotted the Portis shoe rack and it was a good style, the right price but a little too long. However given that it was simply some metal bars we bought it thinking that it would be a very easy hacksaw job to cut it down.
When I got the rack home I realised it was slightly more complex. The rack is held together by bolts that screw into nuts wedged in the end of the bars. The ends of the bars are rolled over to hold the nuts in place. After hacksawing one bar from 90 down to 56cm (big enough for 2 pairs of gents shoes) it now only had a nut in one end. So I took the offcut and used a metal bar to push the nut a little further down into the bar end.
I could now cut of the end that was rolled over and then use the bar to knock the nut out of the offcut.
I then tapped the nut back into the end of the shortened bar.
Finally I used some “unibond repair metal for good” to hold the nut in place. Make sure you don’t get this in the threads or clean it out before it dries. This stuff hardens harder than the screws provided with the Portis and you might have a problem getting them back in.
Finally screw it together as per the origional instructions and there you go.
Metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
You say you have swapped the laminate for carpet but the picture clearly shows laminate?
Actually that’s not wood, lino in the kitchen, the carpet is in a different room.
Nice modification to the Portis rack, clever. I kind of like it short like that!
Thanks Frank.
Hey man I lost the screws and. It’s to assemble this.
Is there anyway you con still assemble it with some others pieces? I don’t want to go to okra and get more stuff.
Hi David, I’ve not taken it apart for a few years but it looks like they are 5mm pan head screws. So yes you should be able to assemble it with some alternatives.
Thanks for the tips and instructions
Used it to shorten the Portis coat hanger :-)
https://imgur.com/a/TZoHjBB
That’s excellent. Nice one Eric
[…] realised that we could simply skip the step in the instructions to add the door. In the style of an Ikea Hack we added a shelf and used parts from the door for a matching […]