Entries Tagged 'Modern Furniture' ↓

Materials: 2x Tupplur blinds

Description: My husband and I own a vintage destination blind from Brisbane Australia which is over 3m in length. I had nowhere that high to hang it in my house but I didn’t want to cut it up. My husband purchased two Ikea Tupplur blinds and used the mechanisms from them (top and bottom) so that we could display the tram scroll in one piece. The ball chain was left attached so that we can ’scroll’ through the destinations and change the display if we want to. This was a good solution because it meant that we get to display the destination blind and preserve its original length, rolled up.

See more here.

~ Catherine

Materials: Ikea Bigarra Candle Dish, 3, 4′ wood dowels

Description: I bought the Bigarra Candle Dish to use as a – GASP – candle dish.

A few days later I began thinking about making a birdbath from scratch because most of them are either too expensive or too ugly. Oftentimes, they are both.

Realized the candle dish was the perfect shape and size for the sleek/organic look that I wanted. Ta Da!

Just hammer the dowels at least 12″ into the ground. Use a level to make sure they’re even and place the dish on top.

Full instructions on staining dowels etc.

~ Karen Bertelsen, Ontario, Canada

Materials: Lekman box, wood sticks, 4 wheels

Description: I needed a magazine rack in the bathroom so we buy a Lekman box and my husband added to the container a frame with wheels. The frame is not connected to the container but we have had not capsizing or slide.

~ Luxra, Italy

Materials: To hang 2 bikes: for the ’stand’: 1 Stolmen post, 2 Stolmen end fittings, 4 Stolmen hooks, square metal tubing, bike inner tube, nuts and bolts, screws. for the ’stabiliser’: 2 Dignitet curtain wire packs (i.e. 4 end fixings), Stolmen bracket, steel with a 90° twist, nuts and bolts, saw

Description: This is an adaptation of a hack posted in 2008, which my husband found whilst searching for a sleek storage solution for our 2 mountain bikes. We liked the idea of using the Stolmen post to make use of our incredibly high ceilings and an awkward shaped niche in our office (that wouldn’t fit a standard wall mounted bike stand). We also hacked the Stolmen post to hang our bedroom curtains and wanted to see how many uses we could put it to in our home!! However, as we have a suspended ceiling, we couldn’t fully utilise the expanding feature of the post to secure the stand in place, so we had to hack another Ikea product to create a stabiliser.

We followed Michael’s hack from 2008 for the main bike stand, except that we used inner tube to cover the hooks for a more durable finish: picture bike hanger. We also screwed the post into the floor for extra stability.

To make the stabiliser, we (i say ‘we’; i mainly just watched and documented progress with my camera!!) cut the twisted steel to size and then clamped it to the Stolmen post with a standard issue Stolmen bracket and a bolt. After some battling with the wall studs, we placed Dignitet end fixings on the walls behind and in front of the post to prevent the post being pulled forward by the weight of the bikes and also to provide some support in case of inadvertent clumsiness on my part.

We then connected the curtain wires over the steel and clamped them in place with another piece of the cut steel and more bolts, like so:

It took longer than Michael’s half an hour, but we think the result is pretty funky.

~ Shel, London

Materials: 1x BILLY bookcase, 1x VIKKA AMON table top, 2x VIKKA BYSKE table legs legs

Description: After moving into a small flat, my wife had the brilliant idea of combining our bookcase with a bar-type dining table. We searched high and low on the net for similar ideas but the closest thing we found was the expedit desk (ugly and too small for us).

Much to our relief her inspiration paid off and we are now very happy with our new dining table/bookcase combo.

Here’s what we did:
1. fastened the billy to the wall to ensure it’s stable.
2. attatch vikka byske legs to vikka amon table top (holes already drilled).
3. place free end of table on the fixed shelf of the billy (approx 105cm high). All we did to fasten the table top was put some velcro tape between it and the shelf – works perfectly but a more secure method could be found (some little L brackets maybe).

Too easy! We finished off by buying 4 tall franklin stools and a benno to put our dvds in.

~ Rocky & Yvette, Perth Australia

Materials: 1 Stolmen post, 2 Stolmen end fittings, assorted bangles, split rings (keyrings), eyelet screws, curtain hooks, screws

Description: Despite scouring the shops and internet, I couldn’t find a curtain pole to fit snugly into the niche of our large window without needing cumbersome and ugly central fittings. The extendable Stolmen post offered the perfect solution.

As the Stolmen post has a diameter larger than most curtain rings, my husband came up with the idea of using bangles instead. We made these into curtain rings with an assortment of eyelet screws (for the larger ones) and split rings (for the smaller ones).

Materials: Pax Wardrobe

Description: I had an ugly, 1970’s cabinet that hid our boiler and our fusebox. I wanted the cabinet to match the kitchen just a few feet away.

The challenge was that there’s lots of pipes and electrical wires that can’t be moved.

I purchased one 100cm wide and two 50cm wide Pax wardrobe cabinets with doors that matched my ikea kitchen.

The 100cm wide cabinet was used to hide the boiler. I used only the two side panels, the bottom toe kick and the doors. The board meant to go at the top of the cabinet was cut into several pieces that allowed the pipe, but still provided the needed stability. Holes were cut into the sides to allow pipes and wires.

One of the 50cm cabinets was used to hide some pipes and a fusebox. The cabinet was assembled according to the instructions with only half of the back and holes cut into the side to accommodate a large pipe.

The third cabinet was assembled with no hack. It’s nice to have some extra storage.

I love the final product. I was pleasantly surprised to find the chipboard tolerated cutting and drilling with no problems at all.

~ Jules, Vancouver bc

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 (2×2’s, I think) and attached them so they’d run along each inside edge of those exterior pieces. Then I placed 2×4’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

Materials: Ikea Malm Bedframe, plywood, batting, fabric, staple gun, L brackets, screws

Description: I owned the Ikea Malm bedframe and wanted to add height to my headboard. With a quick trip to a local hardware and fabric store, I came home with plywood, L- brackets, screws, a staple gun, batting, and fabric. In a couple hours I completely transformed my bed from blah to BAM!

I first added 18″ in height to the headboard by attaching a piece of plywood that matched the width of the Ikea frame. I did this with (3) L-brackets each requiring (2) screws and a scrap piece of plywood using (8) screws.

I next wrapped the plywood and then the entire “new” headboard in a couple sheets of batting stapling it across the back on the sides and top.

The last step was wrapping my heightened headboard in the linen fabric I chose stapling it again on the back across the top and sides.

It really was a piece of cake and I love the visual impact my headboard now has in the room!

~ Meghan Posner