Vertical Dish Drainer

Materials: BYGEL wire baskets, hooks and rails; MAGASIN cutlery caddy. Tools: Pliers, Drill, Screwdriver, Wall anchors and screws.

Description: Washing dishes right-to-left is awkward in this space. The wall literally leaves no elbow room.

This layout also leaves kind of a dead wall. Since UP is the way to go in small spaces, I decided to try out a vertical dish drainer.

It's surprisingly sturdy and functional. I was concerned about the dripping pooling water but, honestly, most of it drips into the sink or onto the stainless ledge.

Using a dish/tea towel takes care of that or you can dry right away. A quick sponge wipe will do it, too!

For larger items, I cover the right-most sink with a cutting board and a microfiber pad made for dish drying. That can be pushed over to catch and absorb any drips from above.

1. Mount rail using appropriate wall anchors and screws.

2. The first basket hangs in the standard fashion. See the close up of how and where to connect the standard hook so that it hangs level and water drops down.

3. Bend standard hooks with pliers, as shown, and insert below third rail. (Hook on left is bent. Hook on right is not.) This pulls the basket tight against the hooks and makes it more stable. If it's too high on the rungs, it tends to lean out.

Also note, I reversed the orientation so that the closed portion is to the front. This helps keep the longer, heavier items in. It creates a good angle for drops to drip, too!

~ Clayton Smith, San Diego, CA

Speaker stands for vintage Diatone speaker system

Materials: Chopping board Kraftig, chopping board Magazin, countertop NUMERAR

Description: I needed good solid stands for for vintage Diatone speaker system. The speaker system is very heavy, 27 kg /piece, stands should be sturdy and rigid.

The general idea - posts must be stable and unnoticeable in the interior.
I do not like the design of high-tech style.

Design and construction I came up with himself.

Unfortunately, I don't have the carpentry workshop... where to get a good semi-manufactured material from wood? It's not the first time I am using products from Ikea to craft for my home ..so I made a quick and direct route to IKEA.

The easy way .. find and use off-label.

So, my choice:
- chopping board Kraftig
- chopping board Magazin

And a NUMERAR countertop leftover from a previous project.

OK, stages:

1) Chopping board Kraftig - this will be the base of the stands.

- chopping board Magazin - top shelf.
With a hacksaw need to cut off the part, get a top shelf and the rear side.

countertop NUMERAR - from the old remnants made the vertical column, also with a hacksaw.

2) Fitting

3) Toning all parts of the same color.
I pasted on contact paper, same wood colour.

Finish varnished with lacquer.

4) So, assembly.

Drilled 4 holes top and bottom.

Long screws are very hard to tighten.
To make it easier to tighten, they were lubricated with liquid soap.

Felt glued to the bottom of the Base, felt just bought in Ikea.

The End !!!

See more of the speaker stand for vintage diatone speakers.

~ Sergey, Moscow, Russia.

Dish drainer => shelf and soap dish

Materials: Magasin dish drainer

Description: When the dish drainer started to become wobbly, we decided to give it a second life.

To construct the shelf we cut the large part of the drainer in half and screwed 8mm chipboards (37cmx30cm) to the top and the bottom. The two additional boards can be put into the shelf at your convenience. All in all 30mins to create shelf where our modem, router etc fit perfectly without a big cable mess.

For the soap dish we used a small part of the drainer and cut off a piece on 13cm length. To make it symmetric we fixed a part of the leg of the drainer to the soap dish with two short nails.

~ Pierre-Alain, Switzerland

Dish rack repurposed for paintbrushes

Materials: Magasin

Description: 1. Carefully dismantle IKEA Magasin dish rack assembly as shown in the image. There'll be three pieces: small, medium, and large.

2. Using a hand saw, cut the legs of the dish rack off the large and small pieces. Set these aside along with the wooden pegs that held the previous assembly together. They will be used to create "clips" with which to brace the paintbrush drying rack.

3. The large and medium pieces form the rack used for drying paintbrushes and rollers. Lay both pieces on a flat surface and slide the large piece (with crossbeams facing up) between the legs of the medium piece (crossbeams facing down).

4. Insert the smallest piece between the connected medium and large pieces so that its cross beams hang off the edge of the table. Once the three pieces are configured to your liking, bind them together with half-inch finishing nails and wood glue wherever two services come into contact.

5. The four legs you set aside earlier will have pre-drilled holes for the wooden pegs. These pieces and pegs will form a clip to prevent the drying rack from tipping over. Create two clips by connecting the sawed-off legs with the wooden pegs. The hinge creates a convenient mechanism with which to determine the appropriate angle to nail and glue the pieces together (see the illustration for an example).

6. Once the clips have been bonded with glue and half-inch finishing nails, fasten them with their hooks facing upward to the first inside rung of the smallest piece.

7. Put your paintbrush drying rack into position onto the table for which it was designed and enjoy your dry, carefully preserved paintbrushes.

~ Daniel B, Canada

No More dinner services

Materials: Magasin - dish drainer

Description: I just used it as a plant stand.

~ Silvia V�zquez , Spain

Loft bed frame and elevated laptop stand

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 (2x2's, I think) and attached them so they'd run along each inside edge of those exterior pieces. Then I placed 2x4'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