Visit her blog for her yarn swift instructions.
Saturday 28 November 2009
Lazy susan yarn swift
Porro made this cool yarn swift from a Rationell Variera pot lid organizer and Snudda Lazy Susan. It's pretty easy to achieve too. Just mark the spots where you want to place the lid organizers. Drill holes and screw them in.
Visit her blog for her yarn swift instructions.
Visit her blog for her yarn swift instructions.
Friday 27 November 2009
Ikea desk with flight simulator
Norman adds "flight simulator support" to his desk.
"I moved across the country and did not bring any furniture with me, only belongings. I was looking for a desk to house my computer, but had some criteria. I like to flight sim on the PC therefore I had a yoke and throttle unit that I had to accomodate. Also, the yoke and throttle clamp onto the desk in such a manner that if there was a lip on the front edge of the desk it does not clamp well. I also didn't have too much room and did not want a huge elaborate solution. In addition many dedicated gaming-desk type setups are quite costly compared to the price of what I got. Compactness, simplicity, and ease of assembly/modification (no access to a workshop here!) were important to me in my choosing. I spent quite a while at the nearest Ikea until I thought up the following solution:
- The desk pictured is the Mikael computer workstation.
- I merely assembled the bottom half of the desk as instructed. I didn't want the top pieces, however, because I like to have a lot of open desk space I just left the top half off. The thick, lip-less pieces of the desk surfaces provide ideal clamping for my yoke and throttle.
- To accomodate the throttle quadrant in a "realistic" position, I merely took the very top piece (with the filing "stands") which fortuitously is just about the same width as the CPU cabinet. Therefore, simply taking that piece as a large plank and installing a few L-brackets in the CPU cabinet I was able to get it to stick out as a platform on which I could mount my throttle.
- I used a total of 8 L brackets, four installed in the "L" shape and four in the "7" configuration. This means the plank is not held into the desk by screws, and can be easily slid out if you need to for example access the computer, or want to store it away for a neater appearance. Now that there are two monitors on my setup I don't really pack it away anymore though.
- Since my PC is a small form factor it is low and fits perfectly in its little "cubby" on the bottom. If I had a bigger tower I don't know that this hack would work.
- Later on I purchased a larger monitor and moved my old LCD down to the platform as a secondary display, providing further realism to serve as a second "instrument panel". You can see that the secondary monitor is bent far down enough such that you can pull out the desk and access the contents with no interference issues. As the monitor is pretty easily adjustable I can stand it straighter or fold it down depending on preference/need to get into the drawer.
As far as cable management goes, because the pieces of the desk are quite thick, I bought some of the Ikea cable tubing and nailed it to the rear of the desk. Therefore all the cable runs kind of follow the contours of the desk on the rear thus you can't really see wires if you're looking at the desk despite the fact that there is no backing material to hide cables behind.
Like I said the hack is absurdly simple, especially it only requires 8 L brackets in addition to whatever you get in the Mikael pack.
In all I found it's worked out quite nicely, I get enough desk space on the top surface and have a great little compact but very effective flight sim setup. The "correct" positioning of the throttle levers helps increase the immersion factor and the secondary monitor there adds to the experience as well. In reality I found the Mikael workstation (without the top) to be a great compact computer desk for any need. I admit that my little modification might not have a lot of use for a lot of people but I'm sure in typical IKEAhacker like fashion others might find inspiration to expand on the concept... Something similar would probably work well for people who have racing wheels on their computers as well."
"I moved across the country and did not bring any furniture with me, only belongings. I was looking for a desk to house my computer, but had some criteria. I like to flight sim on the PC therefore I had a yoke and throttle unit that I had to accomodate. Also, the yoke and throttle clamp onto the desk in such a manner that if there was a lip on the front edge of the desk it does not clamp well. I also didn't have too much room and did not want a huge elaborate solution. In addition many dedicated gaming-desk type setups are quite costly compared to the price of what I got. Compactness, simplicity, and ease of assembly/modification (no access to a workshop here!) were important to me in my choosing. I spent quite a while at the nearest Ikea until I thought up the following solution:
- The desk pictured is the Mikael computer workstation.
- I merely assembled the bottom half of the desk as instructed. I didn't want the top pieces, however, because I like to have a lot of open desk space I just left the top half off. The thick, lip-less pieces of the desk surfaces provide ideal clamping for my yoke and throttle.
- To accomodate the throttle quadrant in a "realistic" position, I merely took the very top piece (with the filing "stands") which fortuitously is just about the same width as the CPU cabinet. Therefore, simply taking that piece as a large plank and installing a few L-brackets in the CPU cabinet I was able to get it to stick out as a platform on which I could mount my throttle.
- I used a total of 8 L brackets, four installed in the "L" shape and four in the "7" configuration. This means the plank is not held into the desk by screws, and can be easily slid out if you need to for example access the computer, or want to store it away for a neater appearance. Now that there are two monitors on my setup I don't really pack it away anymore though.
- Since my PC is a small form factor it is low and fits perfectly in its little "cubby" on the bottom. If I had a bigger tower I don't know that this hack would work.
- Later on I purchased a larger monitor and moved my old LCD down to the platform as a secondary display, providing further realism to serve as a second "instrument panel". You can see that the secondary monitor is bent far down enough such that you can pull out the desk and access the contents with no interference issues. As the monitor is pretty easily adjustable I can stand it straighter or fold it down depending on preference/need to get into the drawer.
As far as cable management goes, because the pieces of the desk are quite thick, I bought some of the Ikea cable tubing and nailed it to the rear of the desk. Therefore all the cable runs kind of follow the contours of the desk on the rear thus you can't really see wires if you're looking at the desk despite the fact that there is no backing material to hide cables behind.
Like I said the hack is absurdly simple, especially it only requires 8 L brackets in addition to whatever you get in the Mikael pack.
In all I found it's worked out quite nicely, I get enough desk space on the top surface and have a great little compact but very effective flight sim setup. The "correct" positioning of the throttle levers helps increase the immersion factor and the secondary monitor there adds to the experience as well. In reality I found the Mikael workstation (without the top) to be a great compact computer desk for any need. I admit that my little modification might not have a lot of use for a lot of people but I'm sure in typical IKEAhacker like fashion others might find inspiration to expand on the concept... Something similar would probably work well for people who have racing wheels on their computers as well."
Thursday 26 November 2009
A LED room divider
Divide your room with lights. This one is from XedMada.
"It's quite simple really, for each unit you need just one Orgel paper lamp and one Dioder color LED unit. Take two of the bars from a Dioder LED kit, gently slide them under the bars on the top front inside of the paper shade of the Orgel paper lamp shade. Be careful not to poke a hole in the paper.
It's easiest to slide the bars in one at a time then connect the two in the center and the power cord at one end. Install the shade, again, careful not to rip the shade. The bottom bar just slips in from underneath once you have the shade installed and rests on the bottom inside against the lamps power supply. A little double sided tape helps you keep it in place and properly focused. Run the cord of the top LED bar to the inside supporting pipe and down the back so it doesn't cast a shadow. In the photo I have two side by side, using one Dioder controller for the top colors and a second set for the bottom. Using the mini CFL replacement lamps I was able to meter a safe load of 5 of the units in one series (the box says only to use three in a series, but that's with the higher draw tungsten lamps.)
An important side note: If you plan to use multiple LED sets together make sure to buy them all from the same batch. Even a week later was long enough for me to get a different run of LEDs that didn't quite match the color of the two sets I purchased previously."
"It's quite simple really, for each unit you need just one Orgel paper lamp and one Dioder color LED unit. Take two of the bars from a Dioder LED kit, gently slide them under the bars on the top front inside of the paper shade of the Orgel paper lamp shade. Be careful not to poke a hole in the paper.
It's easiest to slide the bars in one at a time then connect the two in the center and the power cord at one end. Install the shade, again, careful not to rip the shade. The bottom bar just slips in from underneath once you have the shade installed and rests on the bottom inside against the lamps power supply. A little double sided tape helps you keep it in place and properly focused. Run the cord of the top LED bar to the inside supporting pipe and down the back so it doesn't cast a shadow. In the photo I have two side by side, using one Dioder controller for the top colors and a second set for the bottom. Using the mini CFL replacement lamps I was able to meter a safe load of 5 of the units in one series (the box says only to use three in a series, but that's with the higher draw tungsten lamps.)
An important side note: If you plan to use multiple LED sets together make sure to buy them all from the same batch. Even a week later was long enough for me to get a different run of LEDs that didn't quite match the color of the two sets I purchased previously."
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Traby Traby on the wall
Diego and Monica "Zuzz�" has a simple wall hack for us.
"To create this simple but original composition we used the Traby system: 4 shelf units and 2 doors. We removed the door handles and plastered the holes. Then we painted the doors white. We also add the new Grip handles at the top the doors. As alternative drawers, we used two Branas Basket in the two centre shelves."
See more on their blog facciotuttodaseduto (I do everything seated) which is in Italian.
"To create this simple but original composition we used the Traby system: 4 shelf units and 2 doors. We removed the door handles and plastered the holes. Then we painted the doors white. We also add the new Grip handles at the top the doors. As alternative drawers, we used two Branas Basket in the two centre shelves."
See more on their blog facciotuttodaseduto (I do everything seated) which is in Italian.
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Old lamp, new look
Sophie writes,
"I'm a French girl with an old Ikea lamp. I customized it with some English fabric from Liberty. If it interests you, you can see it here.
"I'm a French girl with an old Ikea lamp. I customized it with some English fabric from Liberty. If it interests you, you can see it here.
Monday 23 November 2009
Expedit lockers
Robin left out some shelves and added some doors to the Expedit and now have lockers for the mudroom!
Saturday 21 November 2009
A low audio video cabinet as room divider
A neat room divider with loads of storage for media stuff. Double duty furniture from Phil.
"We ripped out all the walls of our living room, dining room and kitchen and then added a new kitchen. We ended up with a living/dining area 33 feet long and almost 19 feet wide. We needed a cabinet to house all the AV system including the front speakers that was not tall so that the space still felt large. So we dug a channel through the concrete floor and installed a tube from the attic to an island cabinet. The tube carries power, rear speaker wires, speaker wires for the library and a component A/V cable to a projector for projection to a 7' wide pull down screen that is recessed in the ceiling above the cabinet.
The cabinet was designed to use Ikea kitchen cabinets. They are actually the same cabinets used in our new kitchen with different hardware. It consists of four 24" sink bases with the sink frame cut off the tops. This brought them down to 24" high. There is one 12" cabinet that was also cut down to 24" high which created space for a center speaker. The layout is two 24" cabinets at each end with the 12" cabinet in the center. Since wiring A/V systems is a hassle, to say the least, we decided to have the back of the cabinet facing the dining area all doors that accessed all the equipment.
Ikea was smart enough to make the shelf support holes in the back of the cabinet the same distance from the outside edge as the front holes so the backs could be eliminated and replaced by doors. However, this created a horizontal stability problem so panels were installed in the middle of right speaker cabinet, the 12" center cabinet. A shorter internal panel was installed in the left speaker cabinet to permit the woofer to pass under it.
Doors for the cabinets that have loudspeakers were purchased from the cheapest line that has framed panels. The inner panel was cut out leaving only a hinged frame over which speaker cloth was stretched. Only one cabinet on the dining room side need speaker cloth to permit maximum sound out put form the woofer whose cabinet has speaker cloth both sides.
The ends and top of the cabinet were constructed from 88" high cabinet end panels. We lucked out as there was shipment damage on quite a few of them and got them from the defective goods section.
The cabinets with doors back and front created a problem in that they are about 25" deep. The tall end panels are 24" and we wanted a little overhang both sides. The system is built with Nexus yellow brown doors. To make an "extension patch" seem like a design element we cut the yellow brown top down the middle and installed a 2 1/2" "stripe/extension using Nexus black-brown which gave us the overhangs on both side we wanted. The top could have been made with one 88" high cabinet end cover panel and one 36" high end cover panel but due to the damaged panels the top had to fabricated in three parts. All joins were made with biscuit joiners. This was my first use of biscuit joiners which are great but I'm yet to master perfect joins."
"We ripped out all the walls of our living room, dining room and kitchen and then added a new kitchen. We ended up with a living/dining area 33 feet long and almost 19 feet wide. We needed a cabinet to house all the AV system including the front speakers that was not tall so that the space still felt large. So we dug a channel through the concrete floor and installed a tube from the attic to an island cabinet. The tube carries power, rear speaker wires, speaker wires for the library and a component A/V cable to a projector for projection to a 7' wide pull down screen that is recessed in the ceiling above the cabinet.
The cabinet was designed to use Ikea kitchen cabinets. They are actually the same cabinets used in our new kitchen with different hardware. It consists of four 24" sink bases with the sink frame cut off the tops. This brought them down to 24" high. There is one 12" cabinet that was also cut down to 24" high which created space for a center speaker. The layout is two 24" cabinets at each end with the 12" cabinet in the center. Since wiring A/V systems is a hassle, to say the least, we decided to have the back of the cabinet facing the dining area all doors that accessed all the equipment.
Ikea was smart enough to make the shelf support holes in the back of the cabinet the same distance from the outside edge as the front holes so the backs could be eliminated and replaced by doors. However, this created a horizontal stability problem so panels were installed in the middle of right speaker cabinet, the 12" center cabinet. A shorter internal panel was installed in the left speaker cabinet to permit the woofer to pass under it.
Doors for the cabinets that have loudspeakers were purchased from the cheapest line that has framed panels. The inner panel was cut out leaving only a hinged frame over which speaker cloth was stretched. Only one cabinet on the dining room side need speaker cloth to permit maximum sound out put form the woofer whose cabinet has speaker cloth both sides.
The ends and top of the cabinet were constructed from 88" high cabinet end panels. We lucked out as there was shipment damage on quite a few of them and got them from the defective goods section.
The cabinets with doors back and front created a problem in that they are about 25" deep. The tall end panels are 24" and we wanted a little overhang both sides. The system is built with Nexus yellow brown doors. To make an "extension patch" seem like a design element we cut the yellow brown top down the middle and installed a 2 1/2" "stripe/extension using Nexus black-brown which gave us the overhangs on both side we wanted. The top could have been made with one 88" high cabinet end cover panel and one 36" high end cover panel but due to the damaged panels the top had to fabricated in three parts. All joins were made with biscuit joiners. This was my first use of biscuit joiners which are great but I'm yet to master perfect joins."
Friday 20 November 2009
A modular coffee-side table
I like this one from Andrew. It's simple, no doubt but it allows for many uses - working on your laptop at the sofa, eat (though unhealthy) while watching TV. Nice work.
"When I couldn't find any side tables I could hide out of the way by my sofa for use as laptop stands I decided to make them myself using a pair of Ekby Statlig 119x28 shelves. Each table was made from a single shelf by cutting 310mm lengths from each end for the top and bottom, leaving me with a 570mm piece for the back. I fixed it together using threaded rods held in place on the back pieces with epoxy and then nuts to clamp in place the top and bottom.
As a bonus when they're laid down they can also act like a coffee table on their own or could be flipped to support a larger top, glass maybe."
"When I couldn't find any side tables I could hide out of the way by my sofa for use as laptop stands I decided to make them myself using a pair of Ekby Statlig 119x28 shelves. Each table was made from a single shelf by cutting 310mm lengths from each end for the top and bottom, leaving me with a 570mm piece for the back. I fixed it together using threaded rods held in place on the back pieces with epoxy and then nuts to clamp in place the top and bottom.
As a bonus when they're laid down they can also act like a coffee table on their own or could be flipped to support a larger top, glass maybe."
Thursday 19 November 2009
Save the Rimfrost crystals
Ana salvages the crystals from her Rimfrost lamp and let them breath new life to another.
"I bought this cheeeap old lamp at a second hand shop, as you can see it needed a lot of help to have a new and stylish life but here's where my Rimfrost came to the rescue. I used only part of all the crystals and the rest are ready for another lamp I have in mind (keep tuned). So I gave a couple of coats of primer and a coat of white paint and few strokes of antiquing paint, cause it looked too white. Then I used the crystals and bought some nice shades. I'm so proud of the final look and how easy it has been."
"I bought this cheeeap old lamp at a second hand shop, as you can see it needed a lot of help to have a new and stylish life but here's where my Rimfrost came to the rescue. I used only part of all the crystals and the rest are ready for another lamp I have in mind (keep tuned). So I gave a couple of coats of primer and a coat of white paint and few strokes of antiquing paint, cause it looked too white. Then I used the crystals and bought some nice shades. I'm so proud of the final look and how easy it has been."
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Philip and Cat's home: An Ikea shoe room and more
The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, as we'll see in Phil's series of hacks for his new home with his fianc�e, Cat. Great use of simple Ikea hacks.
1. The Shoe Room
"I thought I might share the shoe room I built for my fianc�e seeing as it drew a lot of interest when I first put photos of it up on Facebook.
We moved to our new house about a year ago and have since been giving it a complete makeover (involving a lot of trips to Ikea and a lot of swedish meatballs in my stomach). A few months after moving in I decided to surprise my girlfriend with a shoe room. I picked up a couple of Billy book shelves with height extensions and a new light (A triple halogen that I can't seem to find online right now) to put into the small walk-in wardrobe room that was next to our bedroom. It was a waste of space before hand, consisting of nothing but two boring hanging rails and a simple hanging light bulb.
While she was over the moon at having a room dedicated to her many shoes and boots, six months or so later and after we got engaged, I decided that she deserved better. So off to Ikea I went again. A few meatballs, a splash of paint and some wiring later and I'd upgraded her shoe room with lots of downlighters (Grundtal spotlights), glass shelves (Billy), a belt rail (I can't find the name) and a bag rail on the back of the door (Grundtal hanger).
2. Bedroom Mirror
"My fianc�e wanted to have a greenish theme to our bedroom and got a bed throw and some cushion covers to start things off. She wanted a big mirror to go over the bed's headboard but wanted it to have a hint of green and didn't really want it looking too modern. The rest of our house is very modern so she wanted something a bit 'older' looking for the bedroom. We got a Hemnes mirror from our favourite meatball suppliers and then modified it a little.
She painted the inner edge with some light green paint and then used some 'antiquing' paint on stuff that makes the paint under it crackle a little to give it the finish she wanted. It was very simple but we think it looks really nice now."
3. Hall Mirror
"For some reason the builders of our house thought the perfect place for a big ugly doorbell and the house's thermostat would be right in the middle of a big long corridor wall. In order to hide it, we bought two Molger mirrors (although we only needed one piece from the second pack). I simply mounted the mirror backwards in the frame and used the base piece from the second pack as a replacement top piece (since Ikea have it designed that you slide the mirror in from the top afterward so for our needs the top lip would have been missing).
I bought some hefty cupboard hinges from a local hardware store and a little metal L-bracket and mounted mounted the mirror to the wall. The hinges are more than strong enough to hold the mirror but I use the L bracket to hook the mirror on when closed so as to make sure that it is level. So now it just looks like a chunky mirror yet we can open it up to change the thermostat when we need to."
4. Under Stairs Storage
"Nothing groundbreaking here but since it involved using a dremel to cut metal it may be 'hackworthy'. Our house has a cupboard under the stairs on the ground floor. It didn't have any shelves in and had no lighting. Basically, it was an utter mess. Ikea didn't have anything that fit our needs. The Broder system was the closest match since it had shelves big enough but even in its shortest form, it was too tall. We bought a couple of shelves, three posts and a height extension rod and I cut the post lengths down to size so that we could fit in one long Broder deep shelf and one short one. I also added some faithful Grundtal spot lights which I wired in to the main lighting for the hallway. The end result is a far better use of space and is much cleaner looking than before."
5. Kitchen Storage
"This was by far the most work of the lot but definitely worth it in my opinion. The space above our fridge freezer had become a rather unsightly dumping ground for random bottles and general stuff. I wanted something far tidier looking and far more practical.
The answer came in the Pax shelf we had left over, lying in the garage left over from and from the many many plain white Billy shelves we've now got after I upgraded the better half's shoe room with glass shelves. After a lot of measuring I worked out that I could fit four Hutten wine racks on one side of the Pax shelf and I could use cut down Billy shelves on the other side to create some shelving. After putting it all together with some metal brackets from a local hardware store, I painted the wine racks, added a Grundtal countertop light (the same as throughout the rest of the kitchen) and bolted it to the walls with three very large heavy duty brackets.
One edge of the Pax shelf had MDF showing as did one of the inner edges of the Billy shelves. I used some white edging strips left over from when we redid the rest of the kitchen to cover these up and they fit perfectly. I'm really happy with the result and love the way the light works through all the different colours of bottles. Our cat, Molly, obviously helped me build the thing. She was obsessed with the sawdust for some bizarre reason.
I hope some of these may be able to inspire others. When you start to think about how you can hack things, walking around Ikea becomes even more fun. You start to see so many more uses for things than originally intended!"
Monday 16 November 2009
Ikea multi lamp design
I'm loving what Steve and his friend put together using the Not lamp.
"Here's a couple pics of a lamp design I put together with a friend for my art studio� using Ikea lamps and a leg of a shelving unit I had lying around � plus a few various odds and ends. Fun project, hangs in my art studio and works really well."
"Here's a couple pics of a lamp design I put together with a friend for my art studio� using Ikea lamps and a leg of a shelving unit I had lying around � plus a few various odds and ends. Fun project, hangs in my art studio and works really well."
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