Get into the details for your home office

It's the details that make the whole ensemble work. Matching the colour, lifting the bookcases. Small touches, but nicely done. Take a look at Jennifer's home office.

1. Expedit shelving - 2 vertical, 1 horizontal. My hubby went to Home Depot and got unfinished furniture legs, took a door to the paint department to match the color, and painted the legs to match. We wanted the shelves to look more like furniture by lifting them off the floor.

2. We bought Vika Fagerlid legs and Galant system table top, and ordered from local glass company to fit a glass on top.

3. Then, of course, the newest stools available, Egil stools, which are very comfortable!

Hang your TV on a pole

Gerry wraps a TV round the pole. Sexy than this 2-pole version I received in 2006. Guess with the sleekness of LCD TVs nowadays, you can do away with the extra pole.

"I wanted a TV stand to mount my 32" LCD. I fabricated the two rails that attach to the TV from steel shelf bracket vertical rails. It was just a matter of drilling three holes in each rail to match the TV mounting holes and a center hole for attaching to the Stolmen pole. The angle bracket is from a Stolmen clothes rail installation kit.

I assembled the unit on the floor with the back side up to make it easy and then lifted it into position and secured it. Cables are enclosed in Ikea Montera plastic cable holder that is attached to the back of the Stolmen tube."

Asker hanging liquor bar

Here's one from a contributor who rather not be credited. He says, "I used Ikeahacker for ideas a lot when I moved, and thought I ought to at least contribute what I came up with." Thank you! :)

Constrained for space and renting (so not wanting to make big holes in the wall) I decided to hang everything I could in the kitchen.  This included hanging pots and pans over the entrance to the kitchen (careful to hang the small ones over the passage to permit passage for up to 6'3"), and the Asker suspended liquor bar hack.

I piggybacked off the studs holding up the cabinet to hang an Asker bar, and three Asker dish drainers. Using left over pilasters from a shelving project, I added wine glass racks to hang underneath. Voila! Extra storage for glass, liquor, wine, and a reminder to drop-in guests to accept the offer of a drink. It's not cheap ($90 for racks, $15 for the bar, $18 for the wine glass racks), but cheaper than any alternative I could find."

Related hacks for your drinks:
- Lack bar hack
- Party with this home bar
- Hutten wine storage in an Expedit
- Expedit wine rack
- Above the fridge wine storage (see no. 5)
- Cheers! It's a Kegerator

Knife drawer with glue and wood!

Laura shows off her chops. I can't imagine what all the knives are for. (A ninja? Heh.) I only use one to cut everything, from apples to zucchinis.

She says, "Ikea recently discontinued the little knife-holder plastic inserts for their Rationell drawer divider... just when I was redoing my kitchen and wanted to put all my sharp things away! Anyway, I tried to purchase a ready-made knife holder drawer (but it is really expensive to have it ship to Italy!)

I made my own and during the process I discovered that it was even easier than I had thought. I measured my longest knife blade for the length of the long slats, and steak knife blades for the length of the short slats. I began to hot-glue the slats on the Ikea rubber drawer liner to line them up and prepare them for screwing, from the other side.... but I discovered that the hot-glue fused fully with the rubber of the drawer liner and greated a very strong hold. So... all I did was just glue the little lengths of wood and spent a total of �5 in materials. Here's how it looks without the knives.

Related hacks:
- Simple knife stash away
- Refrigerator knife holder

Sliding panel curtain door

I love this idea from Rafaela - replacing the curtain panels with fabric of your choice. Would be great as a room divider, wardrobe doors or to shield away a messy work station.

She says "I did a panel for my closet door using Ikea fabric. I love Ikea's fabric and I wanna to do everything with them!"

The Kvartal hangs the Inger fabric beautifully.

See more of her fabric wardrobe panel. She's also completed some minor hacks, like her Ikea entryway bench and fabric art.

Besta room divider for a loft

Dividing up the room is a key to good use of space. It also does double duty as storage. Kevin does just that with the Besta in his loft.

It's for clothes storage and to screen off the bedroom section of the loft. The only problem was the original Besta configurations didn't fit, being either too tall or short.

Kevin writes, "So instead of using the top cabinet module they offer we used their shorter matching drawer front, attaching them with hinges to a custom built frame we installed on top of the Ikea Besta unit made with basic materials from a hardware store."

The back half was finished with white mdf panels and turned out to be the perfect place to hang a TV.

See more of Kevin's Besta room divider and storage or flickr photo set. Also check out the video tour of it.

A Hol for kitty

We've also seen this hack before. But again, this is using the smaller Hol. Small space kitty solutions, eh? The Hol disappeared for a season but seems like it's back. Whether permanently, I don't know. If you're thinking of hacking a Hol cat box, get it quick. With it going for only $30 a piece, it is definitely a great bargain compared to what's in the market.

Now to the hack. Keri (and Teddy) recently moved to a new apartment, with a fabulous fitted kitchen but no place for Teddy to ... er ... do his business.

Keri adds, "(The kitchen) is too well fitted in fact as there was no convenient nook for Teddy's litter tray as there was in my last place.

Taking Dee's kitty litter hideaway as inspiration I decided to hack one of my Ikea Hol side tables.

I bought a Projs desk pad and cut it down to fit inside the base of the Hol, so I could take it out and clean it to keep Teddy's bathroom extra hygenic. Using a jigsaw, cut a doorway in the side of the Hol, and sanded down the edges so they are rounded. Also fitted hinges so make cleaning his tray out easier.

I'm really pleased with the result. It's not original, but I used a smaller Hol than Dee had used, as my shower room is small, and the Hol side table looks like a laundry basket.

Before cutting the hole I'd checked Teddy was happy with using his tray inside a box by just using it on it's side with no lid.

By the way, when I was in Ikea this weekend I noticed that the Hol storage bench that Dee had used is back in stock, for �45. I know a few of your contributors have used it for some incredibly creative hacks, so thought your site visitors would like to know it is available again, in the UK at least!"

What you can hack with a hol:
- Printer stand
- Dog crate
- Computer case
- Radiator cover
- HPTC box
- Subwoofer box