Toothbrush cup nightstand

Fancy some reading and a glass of water before turning in but have no space for a nightstand? Here's a simple solution from Angela.

"It's not so much a hack but rather a creative misuse of an Ikea product. When I remodeled our bedroom last year, I realized that there wasn't enough room left for nightstands.

However, we do tend to get thirsty during the night and I just love to read a couple of pages before falling asleep. To solve our problem ...

... I bought a Lillholmen toothbrush cup with holder in the bathroom department and fixed it to the wall. In order to hold my books and reading glasses, I found a beautiful wall basket in the small storage department. Problem solved!"

Ikea snow boots

The blue bag halter dress must have inspired some to put the scissors to the hardy bag. Here's a raincoat featured on the Ikeahacks group on Instructables. (We have some amazing projects there, don't forget to check it out.) And now, we have snow boots!

Megan faced over two feet of snow in Pittsburgh and no snow boots for Superboy. That's when Ikea hacking creativity kicked in. The boots are not what you'll wear on a regular basis but for the little emergency, it did the trick.

"Unfortunately, my son's snow boots and pants were left at his nursery school.  My husband created waterproof snow boots/leggings out of an ikea bag and packing tape.  The key was using the bottom corner of the bag for the toe (these are over my son's sneakers) then wrapping around his legs and securing with tape."

Ikea chalkboard magazine box

Here's one from Jackie of Lovehome.co.uk. Notches up the "organisationability" (well, you know what I mean) of the wooden magazine box.

"At Lovehome.co.uk, we've come up with a cute way of hacking Ikea's wooden Knuff magazine storage boxes (�2.99 each) to make them both pretty and practical. Perfect for neat-freaks everywhere who like to organise and reorganise their magazine collections without resorting to annoying sticky labels."

See more of the Knuff chalkboard magazine box.

A dash of colour for the Samtid

Linda adds zest to the Samtid.

"I bought a Samtid lamp with a white shade that didn't looked good in front of my white wall. So I decided to hack the lamp. The new shade is made of transparent polycarbonate 1mm thick. I made it a little bit bigger than the original. I fixed the shade with bolts and nuts. For the colour effect I bought felt, added buttons and wrapped it around the shade. I made some more felt wraps in different colours to change! That's it, very easy and fast hack!"

The cherry blossom lantern

With Chinese New Year just roaring in in just a few days, this seems apt. This one's from Joey.

"Here's the Ikea hack I did on the Regolit lamp! I needed a soft glowy light source for the corner of my sitting room, but it has got to be cheapest possible, since we are on a budget....and it's t.i.g.h.t...so I remembered this lantern from Ikea.

And I personalized it to suit the oriental feel of my home by painting cherry blossom branches on it, then later attached faux cherry blossom blooms onto those branches."

See more of Joey's cherry blossom lantern and other hacks.

***

I also take this opportunity to wish all my Chinese readers (and those celebrating it!) Gong Xi Fa Cai^ and have a merry, food and fun filled one. May all you singles out there get lots of angpows* and your uncles and aunties not pester you about your turn to get hitched (and forever lose your right to free money).   

^ well-wishes for happiness and prosperity
*red packets filled with money.

Gorm unit parakeet habitropolis

Victor and Rachel, inspired by the winning hamster home, hacks a cage for their parakeets.

"The Hamster House inspired this hack.  We had an abundance of Gorm shelving units and were tired of the look of our traditional bird cage - Blue and Cheesy.  Although the original cage was large, it was not the ideal amount of room.  Our birds, Hamilton and Edith, fly around our apartment on a daily basis when ever we are home (supervised of course) but spend the working hours cooped up.  We wanted to give them a chance to spread their wings when they could and have more diverse perches and toys to play with.
We modded the Gorm Unit by putting 2 of the five shelves upright on the back to maintain support and cut the cost on the amount of hardware cloth we would need.  Both sides open up entirely and were built out of spare wood from other projects.  We attached Green Hardware Cloth (10 Bucks a Roll from Home Depot) via staple gun to the interior and made a smaller bird access door.  The Hardware Cloth on the face is attached with open Eye Screws so the entire face can be removed for an easy move.  The entire habitat is relatively light and birds love it so much it is difficult to coax them out (adjustment period I suppose).

We also place linoleum tile on the bottom that can easily be removed and cleans much easier then dealing with the bird cage tray."

Other pet hacks:
- Rats chill at the Kullen
- Turtle terrarium
- Guinea pig palace
- Besta bunny hutch
- Ivar cage for degus
- Antonius chicken coop

Kitchen work station

Courtney goes to work and help hacked a kitchen work top from Lack side tables.

"My brother and sister-in-law moved into a larger apartment last month, an apartment with a much bigger kitchen, but still very little cabinet/counter space. Thankfully there was an empty wall to utilize for an ikea hack.

We bought four lack side tables and found an approx. 5 feet long counter top in the 'as is' section at Ikea...

We built the work station starting with attaching two table tops to the bottom of the counter top and from that, we started to assemble the rest of the tables and built the hack from the (counter) top, down.  They have an oversized silverware tray that needed a home, so once the hack was finished, my brother took an unused keyboard tray off of their desk and attached it to the work station.

This work station is surprisingly sturdy!  It doesn't move unless you are intentionally trying to move it.  It's the perfect height, being just a tad taller than an average counter.  The counter top was from the 'as is' section, so it isn't perfect, but paint hid a lot of the minor imperfections.  All in all, this hack was a huge success and totaled only $60!"