Charging Station

Here's another charging station, albeit a more extensive one from Jason.

He says, "I have recently been researching a charging station for myself that
(a) was relatively inexpensive,
(b) didn't look like something my father would own, and
(c) would last longer than a modified shoe box.

So, after a month of lurking and searching I decided to construct a floating landing strip / charging station for the entry way of my apartment. Taking a hint from the 'desktop cable box' posting I constructed this piece by hacking the Ikea Bjorken bathroom wall cabinet which I got at my local Ikea in Burbank, CA for $40.

I constructed it per the instructions with the door right-aligned, except I took one of the mounting reinforcements and moved down to the bottom right inside corner to prepare the cabinet for horizontal mounting. Also, I did not install the tempered glass shelves into the unit. Before mounting it onto the wall I drilled a 2 inch hole on the left (soon to be bottom) side of the cabinet to feed the surge protector into.



I mounted it using a leveler, zip tied the slack on the chargers and voila. The cut out corners of the door can be used to feed the charger cables to the top of the unit.

Simple, clean(ish), and out of the way.




New developments:
1. I'm going to install a switch between the wall socket and the plug of the surge protector so I can turn it on and off as I like and be more green,
2. I'm going to drill another 2 inch hole on top (right side) of the cabinet to more cleanly feed the charger cables to the top surface, and
3. I want to nail the surge protector cable against the wall using those little plastic loop/nail combo thingies.

See more of Jason's charging station here.

Smilla construction helmet lamp

A little unfortunately incident which destroyed John's Smila Blomma turned out to be an opportunity to get creative. He ends up with a cheeky storage place for his Construction Helmet with a lamp to boot.

He says, "Unfortunately I destroyed my Smila Blomma from Ikea, due to mistreatment: I let the bulb come to close to the plastic. After removing the Blomma the construction of the lamp is as such that I could turn it easily into a (echo machine on) Construction Helmet Lamp (echo machine off). It needed just 1 screw, and I can still use the helmet as an helmet.

One can even go really nerdish and turn it into an autarkic lamp by adding a solar panel or a small windmill onto the helmet. During working day at the construction site the solar panel or windmill will charge a battery, at night the helmet can be put on the Smila Blomma construction next to for instance the wardrobe section of your house. Here it than functions as a 'Honey, I'm home' lamp." Nice!

Fniss gadget organizer and charger

Ariel made a gadget organiser and charging station from the Fniss wastepaper basket.

It's pretty easy. All you need to do is basically cut a piece of plywood to "stop" the top and form a base for your gadgets to rest on. Then, cut a hole in the plywood and drill a hole in the Fniss for your cables.




See instructions for gadget organiser.

Wall shelf from a coffee table with a bonus end table!

Scotty and Holly had just bought a flat screen television and wanted it to go on the wall. But then, where do you put all the other stuff?

They say, "I went to Ikea to look for wall shelves for the components (stereo, dvd, etc) - avoid using a piece of furniture just for the components. None of the wall shelves Ikea sold were deep enough. I then purchased two Lack coffee tables and used the tops as the wall shelves. I secured them to the wall with the Ekby brackets, and wired the components through the back of the wall.


With the leftover coffee table bits, I constructed a decorative end table, perfect for housing a lamp, using the Lack's second shelf as the table top, and a base stablizer. The legs form a column as the base.

Kiddy hacks

Robotic moves
Wendy and her 3 year old Ikea hacker, Satch, made this robot out of Ikea boxes. So don't throw away those flat packs just yet. Of course, this can be done with any other cardbox too.

They painted the boxes with non-toxic silver paint and added a few tiny LED lights to illuminate the bottle cap eyes and the top of his head. Way cute.

See more of Satch's recyclobot.

Frame up fun
Kristin had a fun activity for her kids. She says, "We collected all kinds of leaves both from the ground and foliage. The boys placed them where they wanted on the back of these frames from Ikea, add the plexiglass top and screw frame together to press. Couldn't have been easier and the boys are proud to display them."


See more of her kids' leaf art.

Baby and toys can now share a bed
Dot's got a toddler bed but a crib sized mattress. So rather than rushing out to buy a new mattress, she converts the end space into a stuff toy compartment. Neat idea! An extra bar is added to the end of the Kritter toddler bed to fit a crib sized mattress.



See more of Dot's toddler bed with stuff toy compartment hack.

Roll out underbed book storage
Smilla from Iceland needed some storage to fit under her daughter's bed to hold all her books, be able to roll out easily and look nice, not like a 5 year old had done it. I must say Smilla did a pretty fine job.

She says, "I prepared myself to build something from scratch and I was confident that it would definitely look awful considering that my building skills are none whatsoever. I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I went to Ikea and found this great Apa storage box in the kid's department. I also bought Slugger wheels.

I put it together and painted all the wood with light pink wall paint so it would match her room better (it's all white, pink and brown...no wood). Fastened the wheels under ...well, not the bottom...uhhmm...on one side! Or it's supposed to be the side of the box. And to get a better grip when rolling it out under the bed I put a handle at one end (well not from Ikea but you can find lots of handles in Ikea)."




Crayon proof those tables!
Though the Ikea Latt kids' table set is "wipeable", you don't want to spend all afternoon scrubbing crayon marks off the white surfaces. So, Faith, the Design Momma decides to "reupholster" the top and and chairs with some cheery wipeable laminate.




See more of Faith's laminated kids' table.

Getting the ideal laundry hamper

It's not easy to get the laundry hamper to fit your space and style. I know I've been trying to get one for months but just could not bring myself to buy a flimsy Jall. Ochen had the same problem but he hacked his way out of it.

Ochen says, "Yesterday, I gave up on trying to manage dirty clothes, and headed off to Ikea to pick up a hamper. There were none that I really liked, but saw the makings of something close. I bought a small Vacker shelving unit and a Naturlig laundry basket and hacked them together to make the hamper I wanted. The Vacker had the type of framing that I wanted and the Naturlig had a nice canvas bag.


See Ochen's hamper instructions.

Under-sofa toy story

Yeah, under the sofa is a great spot of unused space. Alix reclaimed it as a kid's toy storage space, with a surprisingly easy to do hack.

"We have a 'kid corner' in the living room, but of course the quantity of toys rapidly outpaced the single corner. Rather than allow the increasing clutter to overwhelm the room, I wanted to find a way to make use of the space under our couch. The Ikea Pax/Komplement wardrobe drawers proved to be the answer. The drawers were a tiny bit too tall, so I had to shorten them about a quarter inch with a table saw. To maximize storage space, wheels rather than casters (which are inevitably under mounts) were needed, and it was also important to mount the wheels to allow for just enough clearance for the drawer to roll. The wheels were surprisingly hard to find, but the internet eventually produced a source."

It's a girl thing

Adora salvages a broken picture frame and turns it into a display for her jewelery.

"Many years ago, my roommate accidentally broke the glass of my picture frame. I cut a piece of some used presentation board, and cover it up with Ikea Pernilla fabric leftover from another project. Insert it to the frame, added clear pins (also reused from presentation) to hold my jewelery. It is now hung in my walk-in closet next to Flang, which is holding the necklaces. (I reckon that cork boards are better choice, but I didn't want to spend any money.) This set up is great for me, because I often forget my jewelery when they are in a box. This way, it is easy to pick out something for the outfit."

Lack coffee table gets a mosaic top

Julie spruces up an old Lack coffee table with a mosaic.

She says, "It was pretty simple, actually. I got my dad to make a wood cover (pine sides + mdf base) to slide over top of the original table. I think he made it about 1mm bigger on each side, so it fit perfectly and wasn't too tight. There were 2 reasons for making the wood bit to slide over top: (1) it gave me a lip that would hold the grout in and leave a nice clean finish with even edges and (2) the table lived in Toronto and I lived in Kitchener, so I needed a way to work on the mosaic and then take the finished product to Toronto to surprise my partner (this was a gift). After varnishing the wooden top, I went to work on the mosaic and many, many hours later...voila! I had a lovely 'mosaicked' table."



Click for more of Julie's mosaic table.

Related hacks:
- Classy glass mosaic table
- Mosaic side table
- Mosaic 'Tiffany' table lamp

Spinning version inspired by CB2's Arch Magazine Rack

Emily was inspired by the Arch Magazine Rack from CB2 and comes up with her version of it.

She says, "I used a Snudda Lazy Susan and 1/8" metal rods from Home Depot. I dug out my trigonometry skills to measure off chords around the lazy Susan, then drilled holes and inserted the bent rods. I bent the rods around the metal pole that supports our deck - I bought an extra rod to practice the bending - it took a couple tries to come up with a repeatable process. The Arch Magazine Rack is 9" in diameter. The Snudda version is 15", and it spins!"

***

I want to give a holler to the good folks at Grippiks, who has just joined in as a blog sponsor. Grippiks carry a range of removable surface accents with micro suction technology. In English, that simply means you can stick and remove the films effortlessly. No bubbles. No residue. No mess. And they are specially pre-cut to fit some Ikea products. N-i-c-e! Go clicky clicky on their banner on your right. They ship worldwide.

Josh's restaurant wall art

These are some crafty pieces from Josh, a new hacker, who hacks items purchased from the As-is section. Josh is an artist in Wilmington, DE and the hacks below can be seen at Olé Tapas Lounge, located in Newark, DE.

He says, "I used these pieces to create an entire restaurant full of artwork. I think I might be on to something. This piece is from the Komplement multi-use hanger.

Drawer fronts recycled from Akurum drawers.

The bull face was recycled from a desktop (Vika Manne).



The canvases were painted over from Tulip paintings purchased on clearance at Ikea.



And the Ole' panel was recycled from a remnant of a book shelf.

More of Josh's artwork can be seen at here.

A bright spark for the Gestalta

John comes up with an ingenious use for the Gestalta figurine. Lovely!

He says, "I saw the Gestalta at Ikea a few weeks ago and wanted to get one, but the wife said 'There's no use for it!' So I came up with a 'use' for it. Got a couple of 3W Luxeon LEDs, took the Gestalta apart and wired it up through the limps. I used a Basisk table lamp base, left over from a friend's other project, to hide the electronic stuff."

Liatorp-Billy fusion book cases

Erik previously gave us a discreet computer cabinet. He does it again with this handsome all black set-up. And what's a flavasoft?

He says, "Ikea is one of my favorite places, being a Swede, it's one of the few places to grab a flavasoft for a decent price. I needed an inexpensive way to hopefully make my office look nice, clean and a little bit stylish.


I liked the look of the White Liatorp book cases but they did not come in black-brown and are also very expensive compared to the Billy system. I then essentially mated some As-is Liatorp doors to a Billy, creating the look of the Liatorp for an inexpensive price.

I found all of the following in the As-is Section, but this could be assembled with raw components as well. The Liatorp glass doors are much more elegant than the traditional Billy doors, I found these for $10 each in the As-is section. They come in white and not in the Black-Brown that I needed. I used a quality Espresso colored spray paint and gave them one light coat.

Followed by a heavier coat in a Black with Satin finish. I feathered it in a manner that the brown lightly shows through in places giving it a black brown appearance.

The center desk is a Gustav Desk in black brown The desk is normally US$299 but I found one in the As-is for considerably less, There was a good chip knocked off one of the front corners, but I rotated the desk top, to place it away from view.

The base of the bookshelves are the standard Billy units. I used to black units with various amounts of damage, but was easily hide-able with the doors. The black units I found were preferable to the black brown which were more expensive.

The Liatorp doors are normally at US$125 a pair and are a bit larger than the Billy Doors, so I had to use three sets of brass hinges from the hardware store for each book case. I let the doors hang over the edge and then fastened the brass hinges behind the door and against the outside of the Billy, they remain out of sight and work functionally.

The book cases do need to be fastened to the wall as the glass doors make them front heavy and prone to tip.

In the future I am going to add some glass Billy shelves, LED lighting and a small bit of crown molding to the top of each unit to give it a bit more detail."

Other work stations you may be interested in:
- A floating computer table
- Home office makeover
- An Effektiv work station
- A computer table from a door
- Gorgeous Besta work station
- Huge 8' work desk

Pax wardrobe toy storage

Kathryn in Canada found a simple and basic toy storage solution.

She says, "I found a huge stack of Ikea's Pax wardrobe shelves in the As-is section. At $1 a package and 2 shelves per pack, I ended up buying each package. I think it was 30 or 32 packages in all, which left me with 60-some of these Pax shelves.

I designed a fairly simple shelf unit, and measured it to fit the Gles storage box, at $1.99/bin. It's fairly simple and works great to store the little toys and books for the kids. Nothing fancy, and it does the job. At a very cheap price too! I think I used about 3-4 boards per shelf, 9 bins per shelf and made 2 in total.

A woody window sill

Tim gets hold of some Platta wooden decking to embellish his window sill which gives it a nice natural look.

He says, "I just made a hack using five Plattas. They were to be used for your terrace for flowers or walking on it I suppose. I don't really know. So I used them for making a window sill because these things do look ugh most times and are also ugh expensive.

After I had sawn them apart into a smaller and a bigger part below the 3rd bar, I put them back together at 90 degree angles using brackets and screws. All this took me one hour maximum. That's pretty much everything that's to say about it. They lie loose on the ugly stone window sill and as far as I am concerned I think they look pretty neat. The best is that it did cost me only about 30 Euros (approx. 45 US$) including the Plattas and brackets in comparison to about 100 Euros for a window sill from the hardware store."

Trofast changing table

No need to buy an expensive changing table. Just top a Trofast shelving unit with a changing table pad, just like how Beth and Shelli did theirs.

This is from Beth, who cut a piece of plywood 1" larger than the changing table pad. She wrapped the plywood with teal fleece and her husband secured the plywood to the Trofast with a couple of L brackets.

She says, "It ended up costing a bit more than a regular changing table but we'll be using it a lot longer. I like that they also sell shelves for the Trofast so that we can turn parts of this into a bookcase if we need to."

See more of her Trofast changing table here.

Shelli's pretty much the same but uses 4 Trofast units, a piece of plywood, fabric, a Trofast wall unit, a scrap piece of lumber and a changing pad.

See more of her Trofast changing table here.

Bathroom mirror, more than meets the eye

Gilito from Alcoi, Spain, has this absolutely fabulous mirror. It really got me. Me. Like. Robots. Too.

"I would like to submit my simple hack conformed by the Atran lockable cabinet in stainless steel, the mirror Frack, and two lamps that I got in another lamp store.

I like to collect metallic robots toys and this is the idea for the mirror in my bathroom. (and I am too lazy to setup a good electric installation of the principal lamp, that it is like the first day I bought the house)."

Sarah's chop and shove kitchen cart and circular sofa

Ah, I love these 2 hacks from Sarah. The first is a really cool cooking prep space and the second is a smart tweak of the circular bed into a cosy area.

She says, "I wanted to put a bowl in this Ikea kitchen cart (Forhoja) so I could chop things and shove them right into the prep bowl. Then, once you take out the bowl, you can shove the trash into the drawer underneath (lined with plastic) to bring to the trash. Originally I was going to install a whole trashcan beneath the hole, but I think this is less disgusting than having a festering pile of whatever under there.

First, we measured out where we wanted the bowl and how big the bowl was. We drilled screws through part of the table that would be discarded to hold it to the scrap board that was underneath and clamped the rest of the table to the underlying board. Next we routed completely through the top of the cutting board. Once that was complete (which was actually quite difficult and required a lot of fiddling with the bit, since the cutting board is quite thick), we did the second-order routing or the lip that insets the bowl so it is the same height as the cutting surface. Once that's done, all that's left is sanding!"



See more of Sarah's kitchen cart.

"A friend of mine moved half of her circular Ikea bed (Sandane) into our living room while she's subletting. For a while it was just sitting there together as a single unit, until another friend thought it would be funny to shift the pieces apart and have them like armrests while you sat between them on the floor. That got me to thinking that what would be even cooler would be to have a table there!

So dad and I threw one together this weekend. It's about the simplest possible table you could make. We got one pine board (10 feet by 1 foot by 1 inch) cut into 4 pieces (two 40 inch and two 20 inch) and connected them all up using corner brackets. The boards were slightly warped, so we tried to use the brackets in a way that would pull the pieces together, to moderately successful effect. Not the most elegant, but it should keep it together. Since 20 inches was slightly higher than I had been envisioning, we alternated which corner was on top, cutting out about an inch. Just needs some final sanding and stain and it'll be done."



See more of Sarah's half circular sofa.

A bouquet lamp

Nicoletta submits her daughter, Chiara's hack. An Ikea picture frame (Ribba?) and a light shade. She covered the base with expanded clay balls and inserted plastic flowers.

A massive built-in project

Adele and Jeremy spent a good 4 weekends to accomplished this massive media, wardrobe and storage combo. Time well spent!

"My husband worked on installing 'built-ins' for about 4 weekends in a row using the new 'black-brown' Pax wardrobes that Ikea has. He customized them to make them look like built-ins by cutting down two of the smaller closets to create symmetrical shelves on either side (so it didn't just look like a big hulking wall of closets).


I can't stand the little peg holes, so he turned around the pieces and drilled new permanent holes for the shelves (so that the line of holes is facing out where no one would see it). Then he cut down two doors so that our TV would be exposed (also to again add some decorative shelving around it so it wasn't just a wall of closets).

We found pulls that looked like our bedside table pulls and we also dyed the little plastic shelf holders black (for some reason they don't make a "black-brown" version of those little shelf holders so they stick out like a sore thumb.)

Now when people get a tour of the house they say 'Oh, were those built-ins here when you moved in?' We think we saved ourselves at LEAST 10K!"

Snug desk in laundry room

Hunter mixed and matched Ikea cabinets for a sweet work station. Too bad it's hidden away in the laundry room!

"We recently finished a laundry room desk area that found us combining a few stock Ikea cabinet pieces together (one for the height, one for the width) and found that an oversize cabinet door makes a swell desktop:



The most valuable thing (piece of advice wise) is the use of 2 cabinets to make one (width from one and height from the other) and the use of a 24x64in door for a desktop -- saved us literally a thousand dollars on silestone (and the Ikea Numerar countertops look great at a distance, but begin to unravel at closer inspection -- especially over time)."

Colour my kitchen!

Dawn redecorated her kitchen a couple months ago, with a clever idea for her kitchen walls.

She says, "Living in an apartment, I'm limited in what adjustments I can make, but I was bored with my kitchen's honey colored cabinets, dark green counter tops, and ivory walls. I wanted a color on the walls and to take advantage of some under cabinet storage space.

My solution?

Add color by sandwiching a piece of bright orange and red Fredrika fabric into a basic Clips frame, which fits neatly into the area between my cabinets and stove. (The areas to the side of the stove have long rectangular frames of the same style from a craft store.)

For an accessory rack I used a tension curtain rod (non-Ikea) wedged between the cabinets. A couple Bygel baskets and a Kalmar container hang perfectly from it to provide storage space. Voila! A similar plan on the opposite wall above the sink pulls the look together."