Side chairs into mid-century-ish club chairs

Tim gives a new mid-century twist to these side chairs.

"I'm not sure what the Ikea name for these side chairs is, but they were old and wobbly and the back legs were breaking off. I made a simple base out of 2x10's and used the original arms from the ikea chair as a curvaceous way to hold up the back and keep it strong. My wife, Susan, stitched up ...

... the leather slip covers based on the old (removed) ones. She actually used some leather from a discarded Ikea leather upholstery sample. Now they're comfortable, low armless loungers."

the old Ikea armchair

Play kitchen from Benno TV unit

Nadine made a play kitchen for her daughter, Katharina, over Christmas. Here it is.

"We wanted to make a kitchen for our daughter. The basic is a Benno TV. We used many things from Ikea - I do not know all the names but everybody who likes Ikea will know the things.



For example the washbasin and the cutlery drawer is a bath set we bought some time ago. We changed the left drawer and put a board on we bought and made it into the oven. The hotplates are cut from a trivet bought at Ikea. With some colour and sewing 4 towel from one Ikea towel the kitchen gets a very sweet style.

We are very proud of our first hack and our daughter loves to play with her own kitchen!"

Bathroom shelves into a pot rack

A massive pot rack from Dave.

"I built a pot rack from Ikea bathroom shelves. Took 2 shelves, assembled them, flip them upside down, build a oak box around them, fasten them to oak frame with both a screw in the lower flange (what would have been the top flange).

Also added a top and bottom brace inside the oak frame for support, then attach to the ceiling with eyebolts into the ceiling joists attached to wire and turnbuckles. It was a great simple project. I added the Ikea hooks to hang pots underneath as well."

Related hacks:
- Omar pot rack
- Stolmen vertical pot rack

Molger Cabinet and Bygel rail for the bathroom

Here is another two from Jari B. This time it's his bathroom.

Molger Cabinet: Two pieces for the price of one.

"I purchased this now discontinued Molger cabinet, for the sole purpose of removing the sliding mirror from it and using it as my bathroom mirror. I'd been looking everywhere for a new mirror, and this was the one.



This mirror fit perfectly in the unusually narrow grotto formed between two columns in my bathroom. The rich wood finish was exactly the color I wanted. The fact that this piece was on sale at a clearance price, didn't hurt, either. To mount the mirror, I used tiny 3/8 wood screws to attach a 2 keyhole type hangers to the backside of the frame.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the rest of the Molger cabinet, but in the end, I decided to hang it over my desk and use it as wall shelf to hold miscellaneous office items. My apartment has very low ceilings and is quite small so the Molger cabinet's mirrored back helps give the illusion of opening up the space a bit."

Bygel in the bathroom

"I needed a towel bar to replace the cheap and crusty hardware store fixture that came with my apartment. I liked the stark industrial lines of the Bygel rail. I needed to modify to get it to work, however. I cut some wooden blocks, which would allow the 21 3/4" wide rail to be mounted over the inset molding panels on my bathroom door. The wooden blocks also serve to help push the rail out from the door another 3/4" which gives just the right amount of offset to comfortably hang a thicker folded bath towel. Unmodified and mounted directly, I felt that the Bygel rail sat too close to the surface to easily hang anything but thinner dish towels or washcloths."

Borris mat modular carpet squares

Jari B needed carpets and found a cheap solution using Borris door mats.

"I needed some kind of floor covering for the kitchen area in my tiny apartment, and having recently moved, I'm on really tight budget at the moment. My kitchen is right near the entryway, so it's also serves as a high traffic area. I wanted something durable, perhaps indoor/outdoor, washable, and that could withstand the abuse of high traffic and the occasional kitchen mishap.




I also wanted something with a dark muted tone, a modern utilitarian aesthetic and hopefully cost $30 or less. Although I love the look of sisal, these aren't cheap, and my past experience has been, one errant glass of wine and they become permanently tatooed. Nappy style carpeting in the kitchen is a little, ew to me.

I was in my local Ikea browsing the rug section, and not really liking any of the available options, when I spotted a big pile of  these $1.99 Borris door mats. I immediately thought I could repurpose these into modular carpet tiles, similar to the more pricey FLOR carpet tiles that CB2 sells. The Borris mats seem durable, are hand washable, have a grippy latex backing that really helps keeps them from sliding, and on top of it all they have a really nice subtle stripe texture, and an attractive charcoal/navy muted color.

For this project: I marked and trimmed 1 3/4" strip off of each side of mat to remove the rounded corners using a sharp utility knife- a brand new blade helps. I wasn't sure if fraying was going to be a problem, so i carefully dabbed a tiny bit of Aleenes clear washable fabric glue along the cut edges with my finger,  which should prevent any fraying. For my sizing purposes I chose to leave the mats as rectangles rather than cut them into perfect squares, like the CB2 tiles. The only other thing I did was run a strip of gaffers tape on the back of mats along the edges to help keep them together. For my kitchen project I used 8 mats which cost me a total of $17.33 including tax.

I'm happy with the way this project turned out, and it's huge improvement over the bare, creaky old wood floor. I'm sure my downstairs neighbors appreciate the extra soundproofing as well. The rug also helps to psychologically demarcate the kitchen as a separate area of my home, as it shares the same room as my home office and bedroom."

Lab bench from kitchen cabinets

Ikea has been trying to beef up use of their products in offices for some time now. So, am glad to see it happening. Chris and his team hacked a freestanding lab bench that looks custom built.

"I have been doing stuff like this for years at home and work and am glad that it is being showcased. I work for a product development company called Daedalus - we develop a lot of medical, lab and safety equipment for all kinds of companies. As part of our development work, we often need to perform research or functional testing on the equipment we design so we built ourselves a dedicated testing lab/room.


However, when we wanted to furnish it out with some nice looking, freestanding lab benches, we found that there weren't any that could be had for any reasonable price. So we pulled up Ikea.com and went to work.

What we came up with was a design for a free standing lab bench that is 60"L x 30"D x 38"H, has lots of storage and is solid as a rock. It is composed mostly of Akurum cabinets - one deep base cabinet flanked by 4 shallower wall cabinets. These are bolted to each other and to a 2 x 4 base frame that we built to give it a good foundation.

The wood base is clad with some aluminum bar stock and the whole thing sits atop 4 Capita legs. We topped it off with a heavy duty laminated top from Global Industrial and even wired it with 4 GFI electrical outlets so power would always be at hand. Attest cabinet pulls and some cheap extruded label holders with some lovely in-house designed labels added the finishing touches.

We made two of them at the same time but are now thinking of making some more since we like them so much. We have had them about 2 years now and they are holding up really well. While they have been real work horses, they have also added a polished look to what is an otherwise pretty industrial space.

We are also getting started on hacking together all new desks for the whole office. We are working on a design that would have a long cantilevered work surface hanging off both sides of a 5x5 Expedit book case. If they work out well, we'll send some pics your way."

Fret not, use an Ikea pencil

FloMac, Caroline and Maria tip me on this hack seen on There, I Fixed It.

FloMac says, "I've just seen this hack, it's like a Lapicientos hack!"