The Lack rack hack

This LackRack hack is from the eth0 community in the Netherlands. They have an interesting hack to house a modular datacentre, sneakily under a Lack side table. Now, if only there's a solution for all those wires!

"The LackRack is the ultimate, low-cost, high shinyness solution for your modular datacenter-in-the-living-room. Featuring the Lack (side table) from Ikea, the LackRack is an easy-to-implement, exact-fitdatacenter building block. It's a little known fact that we have seen Google engineers tinker with Lack tables since way back in 2009.

This one is different. During our last LAN 'party' (eth0:2010 Winter) we've used the Lack table as a 19" rack you commonly find in data centers. We call it the LackRack and you can find more info on it on our
wiki page and at http://lackrack.org."

Lapicientos, pencil holder

I love this one. It's the first hack I've seen on the Ikea pencil. A pencil holder from pencils!

"We are 2creativo, a graphic and industrial design studio from Barcelona, Spain.

We have an old hack we made 6 years ago, as we had to visit Ikea several times. It all came because we started collecting lots of pencils they give for free in Ikea, as we thought it was great to have a free material. And we said: we have to think what we could make new out of them.

One day, we got the idea to create a pencil holder made out of pencils. We attach you the final image and how we made it (extremely easy!).

It's name is "lapicientos", a play on words in Spanish: lapicero (pencil holder) + lapiz (pencil) + cientos (hundreds)."

Rats chill at the Kullen

Hot on the heels of our winning Hamster Haven is a Rat Palace! Check out this Rat enclosure from Yvonne.

"I bought my Ikea Kullen closet and turned it into a rat cage. Most standard cages are too small, rats like to run, climb and explore. I put in 4 levels and connected the bigger part of the closet with the small part on the right.

The tunnels are made of N�je.

The houses are made of F�rsiktig

The toilets are Trofast drawers.

The blue box on the second floor on the right side and the two smaller ones attached to the left door are Fabler.

And the blue little punnets are also from Ikea, but I couldn't find them on their website, they were on sale when I bought them."

Besta toy storage

Elena and Markus are total Ikea addicts who hacked this Besta storage for toys.

"We bought two Besta shelf units last spring and wanted to use them to store the kids' toys in the living room.

Unfortunately you cannot have this unit with two drawers, because the drawers are a little less than half the height and a little more than 1/3, so it just does not work and we went for the drawer+door solution with Grip handles for the drawers on top and push latches for the doors at the bottom.

It turns out that those push latches are not so easy to open, especially for kids and also that those Norum doors are so wide that the hinges cannot really hold them up properly, so the whole thing did not look really nice, with the doors at the bottom hanging down in the middle.

So, inspired by this hack we bought 4 Inreda drawers without front and had a carpenter fix the Norum doors to fit the drawers!"

Gustav desk with Billy shelves

Jessica pairs the Gustav writing desk with a hack on the Billy extension units. And it worked out perfectly.

She says, "Living in a small house, my husband and I recently found that the Gustav writing desk was a perfect replacement for a desk that was way to big for the space.  The Gustav fit perfectly on the 45 inch wall available.  The problem?  No hutch or storage space.  We went to Ikea looking for a cabinet to mount above it but most were either 36" (too short) or 47" (too long) and we wanted a perfect fit.

We created a custom overhead unit from two 14" wide Billy cabinet extension units, four wooden extra shelves, two doors for the units and a couple of glass shelves.  Since the extensions are intended to fit on top of a Billy bookshelf, they had no bottoms.  We used two of the extra shelves to create bottoms, attaching them to the sides of the Billy using Kreg pocket screw joining.  To make the cabinet exactly the right length we cut down the remaining two extra shelves and used them to create an open shelving space in the between the two cabinets.  The were also attached using pocket screws, but L-brackets would also work if you don't have the kit to drill pocket screw holes.

To mount it to the wall, we flipped the entire thing upside down so that the more nicely finished "top" of the unit would be what you would see from the desk.  This also allowed the unit to be attached to the wall through the bracing bar that would normally be at the bottom of each of the Billy extension units.   Because of the plaster walls and odd stud placement in the wall, we also attached a 45" piece of poplar (which matches the birch finish very well) to the wall to help support the unit.  We attached the doors and added a couple of glass shelves and now we have a perfect fit for the space.  After our next trip to Ikea, we also plan to mount some lighting underneath."

***

Meet me on Facebook
I've recently created an Ikeahacker fan page on Facebook. I don't spend a lot of time on FB but I thought it is another great way to reach Ikea fans who are also avid Facebookers. So, if you do Facebook, I'll love to  connect with you over there. I've also added photos of my recent trip to Siem Reap. Yeah, just a spot of me cam-whoring. Take a look, only if you're interested.  

Kiss box

Anja from The Netherlands was made for lovin Kiss. Check out the rock and roll Kiss box.

Anja says, "This is an Ikea box, Trissa, for LPs. It was white, quite boring. I've got the album Dynasty by Kiss, so I looked for some good pictures on the internet of the men of Kiss. Then I worked on them in Photoshop till there were only a few colours left (white, black, red, glitter). At first I wanted to make a template so I could spray the paint with an aerosol. But the pictures were too detailed to cut out. So I ended up drawing the pictures with a waterproof pen. For the glitter I used mirror foil. I used the template to cut out the foil. On the internet I sought a free Kiss font and in Photoshop enlarged it to the correct size. Printed out, and cut it out in the mirror foil. Et voila a rock 'n roll Kiss box!"

See more of Anja's Kiss box.

Ikea boxes as art supplies

I bought a few of those shadowboxes too and am also heartbroken that they are no longer available. Here is what Michelle's husband did with his collection. She also shares a simple idea for a sensory table for infants.

Ikea art
Michelle says, "I thought I would share some art that my husband made using old Ikea shadow boxes. Unfortunately, the shadow box is now discontinued (sigh) but it was able to be used in many an art project between my husband and I when it was available. My husband, Matt Ritchie, used them to make 4 by 6 inch dioramas. Using hand cut wood acrylic paint, and the Ikea boxes. The boxes used to come with a heart or key inside, and were really hard to open since the glass in front was glued in. We had to tap (well, pound) the box on the ground to loosen the glue, and the glass would usually come out pretty easily. Anyway, I hope you like these little art pieces!

Rast sensory table
"I turned this little Ikea nightstand (Rast) upside down and excluded a shelf so i could add a small bin to it and make it a sensory table for my infant/toddler class. I put different sorts of sensory objects in the bin, like flour, dirt, sand, oatmeal etc, and the kids love to pour them from one cup to another. the shelf was just the right height for the toddlers in my class, and I made all four for way cheaper than one pre-made table. Then I used acrylic paint to add the flowers on the sides!"

Congrats to Martina and Sonic the hamster!

Martina's Hamster Haven led right from the start. The Chicken Home put up a fight but in the last few days of the poll, the Ham pulled away and took home the trophy. The Hamster Haven wins at 28% of votes, with the Chicken Home coming in second with 21%. Thank you, thank you everyone for joining in the fun and voting. For her effort, Martina wins a gift card from Amazon.

Click here to view results.

***

I want to thank the good people over at AT who voted Ikeahacker as the best Home Tech Blog of 2009 in the Homies. Wow. What an honour to be on the same page with insanely cool sites like LifeHacker and CoolHunting.

A lighting hackea

A simple light hack but one that helps Stefan save energy.

We have a dining room table light (not made by IKEA) which has 5 E14 fitting type bulbs. The original bulbs were 25W a piece, which adds up to 125W total.

Trying to reduce our energy usage I decided to replace with the 5W Sparsam CFL's. At first it didn't look too pretty.

The solution was simple: spray-paint them to a matching color and so the label text isn't visible anymore. The result: energy usage dropped from 125W to 25W. On the last picture you can see lights 1, 2 and 5 have been replaced with the Sparsam bulbs, lights 3 and 4 are original (for comparison purposes).

PS vanity

Floating vanities are absolutely gorgeous. I would love to have this one from Jenni.

She says, "This cabinet is in our bathroom. It is a white PS cabinet. The legs were removed, then painted with white gloss enamel to get a true white (original white is cream in colour). It was attached to the wall from the inside of the cabinet, so no legs required and at the height we needed.

We had a piece of chocolatey timber cut to cover top of cabinet with a little overhang, hole cut out to drop basin into and finished with a 2pac seal for waterproofing. Sink hole was also cut into the top of PS, then the timber lid was attached to cabinet. Next was securing in sink and plumbing in tap mixer. It is working very nicely."

Ikea rockets and Christmas trees

evojsn tips me on this Christmas tree rocket launcher featured on BoingBoing. It looks like the 32 rockets are mounted to a Lack coffee table. Woohoo! Pay attention 31 secs into the video. Do you think it's a Lack? Even if it isn't, it's totally hysterical.

B�sil pendant lamp from Bastis bowls

Pieter creates a pendant lamp in honour of his cat. Nice.

He says, "It was created last summer, but it didn't find a way to the public until now. Since recently, it's been on display at a designshop here in Belgium. With the nice girls of KAP32.

It's a pendant lamp made from 15 cat/dog food bowls (Bastis), some lamps and wiring. I named it 'B�sil' after my cat. The pictures speak for themselves."

Ivar loves Dolly

Lights, camera, Ikea hack! Romain turns the Ivar side unit into rails for the cam.

"A few days ago, I found out that the Ivar "wooden ladder" was perfect to use it as rails for my cinema dolly! I can now make some nice sequence shots with this 18� accessory from Ikea."

Check out this video shot from the Ivar rail.


EOS 7D + DIY dolly / 1st (snowy!) outdoor test from Aalto on Vimeo.

Ikea blue bag halter dress

Halloween's over but Adriana still wants to show us her Ikea shopping bag costume. And hear this, she teaches a course on Ikea! Wow. I hope I get an A on that course.

Tote dress recipe:
Take 1 IKEA bag
Make it into a halter dress

She says, "I fashioned the top of the bag and one handle as the neckline and halter for the top of the dress. Then I cut open the seams of the rest of the bag to make a backless, A-Line outfit. I sewed darts in the front and back to be shapely for my bust and back. I cut the long handles off of two more bags to create ties for the back of the dress. Waterproof and ready to tote!

But really the dress is achievable with just one 59-cent bag and by jacking the handles from two more!

Oh, and I also attach a mini-Ikea purse I made with just yellow duct tape and staples from a larger Ikea bag. It is the purse for my nephew's toy robot to carry his baby robot around town.

I am a professor at the Parsons School of Design and I am teaching a course in the spring called IKEA-ology: Ikea as global urban home."

Update (11/8/10): More photos!

Recycling bin solution

This is Glyn's second, which I think is just brilliant. Compared to his, my Effektiv cabinet with custom drawers recycling corner looks ghastly. Glyn's does take a lot of space but oh-what-joy to sort and hide the recyclables beautifully.

He says, "In Germany it is required to recycle. You basically need a bin for everything: glass, paper, batteries, plastic and metal packaging, organic waste and the rest of household waste. As you can imagine, for all those bins alone you need to come up with an idea if you don't want them to dominate your kitchen. Since we only rent an apartment we don't have much choice of where to put all that stuff. So we've come up with the idea of having a recycling cupboard dedicated to the biggest bins.

We took a Akurum cupboard with Applad doors and handles to match our Ikea kitchen. Put the worktop on which is also used in the kitchen and cut two round holes in it. We sealed and glued the inside cut with edging strip which came with the work top. As lids we used some wooden food plates which Ikea sold in the summer and added Ikea door knobs. In order for the lids not to fall through we cut the holes in the Akurum top about 2 cm smaller than the one in the worktop.

And voila! Our recycling cupboard was done."

Billy dresser

Glyn and wife send me two hack. This is the first: a dresser for their dining room and it's so thoroughly disguised. I would never have thought this cottage chic dresser was previously an Ikea vanilla Billy.

My wife and I are real Ikea enthusiasts. We wanted some sort of dresser for our dining room and didn't want to pay dresser prices. So we had a go at creating one on a shoe-string budget. First of all we took a plain white Billy shelf and cut it in half. We then had a spare Pax wardrobe top which we got from the Ikea's bargain basement and fixed that in the middle.

For the back we've used some tongue and grove panelling. For the side borders we've used some skirting board which we got from the local DIY center. We also got some wood lengths to use them as "plate holders". The top border was some part of an Ikea bed head (also found in bargain basement). It had the ideal shape for what we had in mind and had to come with us.

All plain wooden items we've painted with some white base coat in order to give it a bit of a used look. Also the curtains are made from Ikea fabric."

***

Voting to end soon!
I forgot to mention that voting for the Ikea Hack of 2009 ends on Jan 15. So, get clicky if you haven't.

And the polls so far ... it's a battle that may just get wild.

The Hamster Haven is leading with 22% of votes, with the Chicken Home coming in a strong second at 21%. Trailing in third place is John's Expedit Room divider (18%). Who will win? You decide. Vote now.