Ordning Wake-up Light

Materials: Ordning, Lobbo, Hemma

Description: I like waking up with a dawn simulator alarm clock, but unfortunately the one I have has controls that are less than user-friendly. What I'd really want is a wake-up light that lets me program different wake-up times for each day of the week. Since I couldn't find anything like that, I decided to build one.



IKEA items used:
- 1 Ordning cutlery caddy
- 1 Hemma pendant lamp cord set
- 2 Lobbo lamp shades
- 4 wooden dowels

Other items used:
- 1 plug-in timer
- 1 Velleman programmable dimmer kit
- 2 faulty CD-R
- 1 old PC power cord
- odds and ends

The Ordning makes up the body of the lamp. This was lined with the first of the Lobbo shades, cut to size. One of the Ordning holes was widened to fit the Hemma cable plug thingy. This secures the cable, and additionally served to connect a grounding wire to the Ordning - because the Ordning is metal, safety requires it to be grounded; that is also why I used a 3-wire PC power cable.

I found that a CD is just about the perfect size to act as a "lid" for the Ordning. I stripped the reflective layer of two misburned CD-Rs (because I wanted light reaching the body of the lamp), glued them together, and enlarged the hole using the Lobbo fitting as a template. The CD and Lobbo fitting are held together by the lamp pendant, and kept in place by IKEA wooden dowels glued to the CD. There may be simpler ways to do this if you want to make a plain lamp, but I wanted a dust cover for the electronics.

I sawed off the plug part of the plug-in timer and glued it to the "back" of my lamp, leading the wires in through the Ordnung holes. Finally I connected everything together and used the second Lobbo shade in the expected way.

Warning: electricity is hazardous, don't try hacks like this if you lack the appropriate training.

~ Eli, Belgium