Loft bed frame and elevated laptop stand

Materials: MALM and Magasin

Description: Here are two of my Ikea hacks.

The first is a bed frame I made...

I recently moved from a house into a small apartment, and needed somewhere to store all of my things, but still wanted a clean, clutter-free look. Ikea had the answer. I simply found a chest of drawers that I liked from Ikea, and bought four of them - the MALM 3 drawer chest. I then built a simple bed frame to sit on top, and turned it into bed with 50 cubic feet of storage space underneath (including the drawers)!!

The frame wasn't hard to build:
I measured a queen sized mattress, and cut large pieces of lumber to fit around that. Those exterior pieces of lumber were reinforced in the corners. Then I got smaller pieces of wood (2x2's, I think) and attached them so they'd run along each inside edge of those exterior pieces. Then I placed 2x4's on top of those runners, and they reached from one end of the frame to the other, acting as slats for the platform. Once the slats were in place, I just placed a large piece of chip board on top! I also added a couple other finishing touches, such as adding small pieces of wood to the inside edges of the chest of drawers, where I cut out a notch, which I used to hang a small curtain on a dowel to hide the spaces.


My second hack is a laptop stand...

This hack is extremely easy. I simply started with a Magasin wooden dish drainer from Ikea, and cut off the longer supporting legs on the "back" side. Then I attached it to a wall using Command 3M small wire hooks, and voila!! I used 5 of these strips because I wanted to be sure it would support the weight of my laptop. I really like the look of a floating laptop, and this dish drainer worked perfectly.

I can also remove the laptop stand from the wall completely if I wish, or fold it up completely. Or, I can fold the top portion up and use it to support a text book on the lower portion. Or finally, I place the laptop on the top portion, and either fold up the bottom portion, or use it to store my mouse, wireless keyboard, etc. Very versatile!

See more photos here.

~ Angie Andrade, Stillwater, OK