One for the coop

Susan, a mother and chicken owner from Northern Ireland, uses the Ikea Antonius range as a new bug-free chicken nest box and storage unit. The drawers were cut with a sharp knife to create the nest boxes. Chickens love their new home!

See more of Susan's chicken nest box instructions and more photos on Flickr.

Related hack:
- Ikea home for chicks

Built-in Besta entertainment center

George is quite the hacker and has started his own blog documenting his personal Ikea hacks.

"I've done two kitchen remodels over the past few years where I hacked/modified Ikea cabinets, however I never documented the hacks. Anyway, I just posted an entertainment center build where I hacked a couple Ikea Besta products.

The point of the Besta hack is to raise the speakers, hide the components and cables. There is also a neat sliding shelf for the receiver.



Hop over for a looksee.

iMac computer desk

Gérard from The Netherlands has a sleek solution for his iMac.

"My Apple iMac obstructed our dinner table for a year. My wife did not make much of it. To please her I did a little Ikea hacking. I bought a Ludvig Laptop shelf/charging station. And a Ludvig Router/modem wall cabinet. I used the wall cabinet as computer stand and the laptop shelf for my keyboard and mouse. Both Ludvigs have nice compartments for various stuff (Hard drives, headset, DVD’s etc.) The set is complemented with a Vitamin stool. When not in use the shelf is put to rest and the computer is not in the way. I think it is a nice hack and my wife is pleased. Mission accomplished."

Halloween costume - Toxic barrel of waste

Just a few more days before Halloween and if you're desperate for a costume, this is a quick and easy one from Rebecca.


"My oldest son's Halloween costume this year is an Ikea hack. He's going as a barrel of toxic waste. We made this from an Ikea Dimpa hamper. We cut head and arm holes, and painted it up."

Low budget network cabinet

Oliver builds a network thingamajig inside a PS cabinet.

He says, "We built a network cabinet based on Ikea PS Cabinet "Doppeltür PS Schrank" from Germany. View the original article in German."

Better yet, read the google translation. "Does not this look brilliant? Made class!" Cracks me up.

Halloween goes East

The day for ghouls and goblins will soon be upon us. Tien and friends decide to go Japanese this year. Why not? Witches and vampires are so last season.

"My friends and I are going for a Japanese theme this year. For one of my friends, I wanted to make a sexy kimono (was inspired by Emiri Miyasaka's kimono, right).

The cheapest place for colorful fabrics by far is Ikea (at least in my city). So, I purchased the fabric, took about 6 hours of planning and sewing (didn't really have a pattern... just kind of made it up as I went).

Turned out rather nice. It wasn't expensive - cost me about 180 kr (roughly $25, but it's probably even cheaper in the US). Below is my makeshift pattern. I based it off of this. Here are the measurements I used and how I did it. I kind of eyeballed the measurements, so it's not exactly as that, but I tried my best to remember the measurements for the instructions.

 

Obviously, one can go longer and multiple layer it, but I have to make 4 costumes for my friends and simplest is best. Hope someone tries this (but not in my city :D). It's going to be an awesome Halloween."

Movable laptop desk

Linda hacks together a mobile laptop desk. She didn't provide the names but I think the base is a Besta height extension unit. The shelf is supported by Capita legs.

Linda says, "I have a laptop computer with a battery out of order, a subwoofer and external hard disk. I wanted a piece of furniture that could hold all of them. I created it after two hours in Ikea Cronenbourg at Strasbourg in Alsace."

Ecomodder Ikea LED hack

A hack that Mother Earth will approve. This Ecomodder is from Marcus.

"I'm a furniture designer and a ruthless hacker of all things found, discarded and misused. I have a thread going on Ecomodder.com where I am building a Kamm back aerodynamic mod for my Previa van. I'm getting 43% above The EPA mileage rating for my van with a record of 36mpg highway with normal driving techniques. My Ikea hack involves Dioder lighting strips and aluminium rails from the as-is section. The dioder lights are 12V and make perfectly cool turn signals. The aluminium strips make a great lightweight frame for the coroplast.




The Kamm back reduces the aerodynamic drag on my van. At highway speeds over half of an average car's fuel is consumed to overcome aerodynamic drag.

Much of the drag on a car can be reduced drastically. This drag is expressed as a coefficient. In my case the Previa has a stock coefficient of drag or Cd of .35. If I cut that in half, to .17, I should cut my fuel consumption by over 27% The Kamm back I made theoretically reduces my highway drag by about 15% which should translate into a fuel savings of 7.5%. That's 7.5% less Co2 and everything else. I'm also working on a belly pan using the ikea aluminum slats which smoothes out the airflow under belly of the car, good for another 6%.

The LED lights consume less energy than incandescent turn signals which in turn uses less fuel because a car's engine generates electricity using the alternator and that takes fuel.

Since I've been doing this over a year ago, I've saved over 85 gallons of gasoline and emitted 750lbs less Co2 than a stock Previa. I'm using 46% less gas than the EPA rating on my vehicle and thus emitting 46% less pollution. Part of that is thanks to Ikea hacks.

I also reduce my footprint by riding my electric motorcycle when I don't need the Van which reduces my emissions by 99.9% although I can't say Ikea hacks help there."

See more of it over at Ecomodder.

Pyrography your kitchen utensil

Victoria goes arty with the $0.49 Kitchen Utensil Set. Reminds me of henna.

But unlike henna which is drawn on, the designs are "burnt" onto the wood. Victoria explains that Pyrography is a little used process in the design industry ... and can be used to create interesting effects on the ready made."

See more of Victoria's Pyrography technique.

Lack Drafting Table

Nate turns his Lack table into a drafting table.

My Lack table started to show some wear, so I replaced it with a different bedside table. I turned the old Lack table into a drafting table for my design work. The extra legs made great pencil holders that match the finish. The entire project requires 2 hinges, 8 screws, a bit of super glue, and an elementary understanding of Trig."

Patrull Lathe splashguard

Alan finds an easy solution for his lathe splashback.

"I've been meaning to make a splashback for my little Taig / Peatol lathe for a while, I was thinking of using some aluminium sheet and folding something up, but hadn't got around to it. Browsing in Ikea, I saw their Patrull stove / hob guard. It looked about the right size and 1mm Stainless Steel, with safe edges and folded over so it's very rigid too. It had a central part so it can expand outwards too. Best of all it's only £10.00 or with an Ikea Family card a smidge over £7.00. Can't buy the materials for that, and you get a free cup of tea and a handful of wooden coffee stirrers too!

I folded it up and it's absolutely spot on, it grips to the base of my lathe as if it's made for it. Holes are in the right place, plus I have a chunk of stainless steel from the central part spare too. Comes with dome nuts and extra brackets which I can adapt and make it into a really sturdy job! It'd work just as well for other small desktop lathes, unimats, micro mills etc too.


It's magnetic, so I can fit my little magnetic tin storage boxes to it too (Also from Ikea - they normally fix onto their steel white boards). Ikea is a good place to look for items which have other uses around the home and workshop. Great for putting those little allen keys and chuck keys in so you don't lose them the instant you put them down.


For under a tenner - what a steal, a stainless steel you could say. Great idea for thinking outside the flat pack. Also picked up some Dralla chopping boards - £1.79 for two, great for protecting the bench top when working on any small projects and dirt cheap too, made from Polyethylene with a textured non slip finish, oh and a little Birch cutlery tray, solid wood, finger jointed corners, pre-finished and £6.99!"

Easy soap stand

Lydia comes up with an elegant soap stand for her tub.

"I wanted to pass along something I just completed - while I'm using it as tub decor, you can easily take the idea to make cake stands out of any plate and candlestick with a wide enough top. I started with the shorter Skimmer candlestick and a Smarta pie plate from Ikea. I painted both purple and glued together with Gorilla Glue. Added some lavender soaps and bath accessories and voila!"

See more of Lydia's soap stand.

The lowdown on the Expedit TV unit

Tess (and Patrick) share the latest project they undertook to convert a boxy Expedit TV unit into a low slung one.

"My husband Patrick thought we'd share the latest project we undertook a few weeks ago! We bought the Expedit TV Storage Unit in 2007. It did a great job not only holding our TV and book/DVD collection, but hiding an ugly fireplace in our living room. When we moved last year, the tall, boxy TV unit still served it's purpose for our storage needs, but in our new living room, rendered the far corner of the room 'dead space'. We decided a long-and-low TV/bookcase storage unit that stretched the length of the room would be ideal. After searching around for freestanding and built-in options costing $$$$s, the answer was staring us in the face all the time - why not take apart our TV unit and put it back together as two separate bookcases? All we needed to buy was material for the end pieces, and some wooden planks plus MDF board cut-to-size and painted did the job. Granted there was a lot of extra holes drilled and long screws holding it together (and a lot of dowls!) and the top surface does have a few superfluous screw holes exposed. But for under $100 we now have a 'custom built' TV and storage unit that fits perfectly in our living room."

Antonius cable manager

Tom found an alternative to the Signum cable manager. His uses the Antonius clothes hanger. If you don't have a lot of cables, this could be ideal.

"I recently found a nifty solution for the crippling problem of cable management. It might not be suitable for super computers but it does work for my desk. It was built by screwing Ikea Antonius coat hangers to the underside of the desk using long enough wood screws. To give it a bit of stability, I used a hollow tube (like piping cut to length) for the hangers to sit on."

Related hacks:
- Signum cable manager to handbag rack
- Desktop cable box
- Simple cable management for the Galant desk
- Declutter your Jerker with an mdf pegboard

Gorm pedalboard for guitarists

Christopher gives the Gorm rockstar appeal.

"Guitarists use lots of gadgets sometimes. One of their favorite gadgets are effects pedals. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors, and they usually are stomped on to activate. Well, I was at Ikea one day a few years ago and noticed that the Gorm shelf would make a really nice cheap pedalboard. This is my most recent.

A lot of guitarists have caught on. There's a thread on a musicians forum dedicated to Gorm pedalboards! (One of them below, via Harmony Central) Some people even paint them but the same basic pattern follows. Cheap Gorm shelf, Velcro, and voila! Pedalboard. Cheap, sturdy, awesome."

Hutten wine storage in Expedit unit

Brad adds a wine nook in his Expedit. Enough to stash away a few bottles of red and wine as well as glasses.

"I love my Expedit unit. It has become a handy storage and decorative center piece in my home. I hacked a Hutten wine bottle storage to fit into the 2-by-4 Expedit. The Hutten is the perfect width as-is to fit into a bay in the Expedit. It is about an inch and half too tall, though. I measured the Expedit and trimmed the upright posts to the correct height. I then drilled new holes in the vertical bits to move them all down roughly the same distance that I trimmed from the posts. The fit is perfect, and very convenient. I initially intended to stain the Hutten to match the dark brown tone of the Expedit, but once I had it in there, I decided that I like the contrast of the dark and light wood tones. I also added an Ikea wine glass rack into the neighboring bay."

Stolmen vertical pot rack

This is a terrific idea from Andrew. A pot rack in the corner of the kitchen, standing almost sculpture like. 

"I thought people here would be interested in the pot rack I devised for our recent kitchen renovation. While we added plenty of storage to the space, I prefer pots to be easily accessible, but we did not want to have them hanging from the ceiling in the center of the space. Fortunately, we had a small corner of unused space between a cabinet and entryway that was sized just right for a column of pots. Our system uses one pole from the Stolmen shelving system ($30), a handful of double-sided brackets (6 for $15), and Grundtal hooks of two sizes (5 for $3). It is extremely sturdy, can easily hold hundreds of pounds of pots, and is held in place with pressure alone, obviating the need for screws and making it easy to disassemble and move to another location. (The Stolmen system is meant to be screwed in place on both ends, but once I had it up, it was clearly solid enough to stay put without them). I hope this is helpful."

Cool it with this media unit

Matt supercools the his new media storage unit made from Efektiv office wall cabinets.

"I recently moved into a new efficiency apartment and I though I would try to contain the mess of wires that go along with an entertainment center. I noticed this hacked TV stand so I did the same thing but added on a little. I ended up adding a sheet of 1/4" plywood onto the back so I could easily mount computer case fans that I purchased from Monoprice to remove heat from the enclosure. As you can see I have a cable modem, wireless router, wireless network attached drives, receiver, and all the power supplies internally. I know it is messy inside but that is exactly why I made this so the mess is contained internally."

Craft cabinet

Kristin tucks an ultra-hardworking craft area into a computer armoire. It's amazing to see how much stuff she managed to sneak in there.

"Using several Ikea products, I took an old computer armoire and cabinets to make a scrapbooking/craft/desk/office area. I don't know the names of the actual parts I used, but you can see it all with descriptions on my blog. The desktop is actually the glass door for a tall cabinet or armoire that I found in the as-is section (my favorite!) for about $10. My husband cut some MDF to place under it for stability, and I used the small cabinets on each end. Inside the armoire are towel rods for ribbon spools, bins for storage, metal strips with magnets, and magnetic spice containers for storing smaller pieces"

See more of Kristin's craft armoire.

Ingo and Stefan dining set hack

Anny gives the Ingo and Stefan a little sparkle.

"I painted I got an Ingo table and two Stefan chairs for $10 on Craigslist a few months ago. Add a can of Silver Aluminum paint ($1 clearance at Home Depot), sealant ($8 after 10% off mover's coupon), upholstery fabric ($10 for 3 yards at a designer's garage sale) and A LOT of time spent sanding to yield my very first Ikea hack!"



See more of Anny's dining table and chair hack!

Alex gets a facelift

Jessica gives her Alex drawer unit a facelift.

"I changed my white Ikea Alex to better suit my decorating tastes." The drawer units were first given a thorough paint job with spray paint. When dry, she mod podged the front panels with scrapbooking paper.

Her instructions are here.

Hide your cables in a Vattern

This is neat. Paul hides a stash of cables and switches inside the Vattern bathroom cabinet.

"In a corner of my room I've fixed my router, the switch and the cables on the wall. It was quite practical but it looked ugly.

Two months later I found in the "bargain corner" two doors of the Vattern series. Later I bought two basic elements of the Vattern series. The result is a beautiful and nice litte cupboard which hides router, switch, cables and all the other stuff. I didn't connect the elements, but it is still possible to do so by using screws. Finally I fixed four litte cabinet feet, so that the doors can open easily."

Billy revisited

I like doors on my cabinets to keep the dust away, so I totally dig what Massimo did to his low single Billy.

"My goal was to realize a little cabinet nearby the entrance of my living room. I just bought a Billy frame and two little doors made for the height extension unit. The problem is the frame holes don't match with the doors mechanism. After measuring the best placement of shelves and doors all together, I drilled eight new holes with a 5 mm drill bit to fix the pivots. The result is a brand new cabinet (width: 40 cm, depth: 28 cm, height: 106 cm) with an open shelf completed by a little wicker basket (perfect to empty my pockets) and two nice compartments to change the bookshelf look of Billy system."

Finally, an ergonomic desk!

Joel and Mandy

"We had an old Ikea desk that wasn't ergonomic. In fact, none of the desks at Ikea are ergonomic! So we decided to build one ourselves using Vika parts (Furusund, Byske, Fintorp) and created a nifty second tier on top by mounting two Knuff magazine files sideways. The end result is a desk with tabletop cubbies, hidden wires, a top drawer charging station, and a hot, sliding keyboard tray. And did I mention it's ergonomic?"

The old desk

Ikea Furusund

And the complete new ergonomic desk

Here is the Flickr photo set with instructions. Check out the video of them putting the hack together too.



Other desk jobs:
- This is no wallflower
- Study and dog room remodel
- Laundry room desk
- Cozy workstation for tiny alcove

DJ turntable setup out Ikea media center

David salvages an old Ikea media unit and whips it into a DJ desk.

"I was looking for a desk to house a pair of Technics 1200 turntables. They're fairly wide, so most desks don't accommodate them. DJ desks can come in at around $600, which is far more than I wanted to spend. I had this Ikea media center I bought in 2006 that almost fit, but not quite. So I bought some lumber from Home Depot, stained it, and attached it. It was about $26 in lumber and only took an afternoon to assemble. The key is that the top of the media center popped off, so I could attach the posts securely. It may be similar to Linnarp, but I can't find the exact model. The top part of the media center is part of the original Ikea unit. (solid pine). The posts and the top surface of the desk are from Home Depot."