replacing a built-in wardrobe's sliding doors

bruce's wardrobe needed new sliding doors and the pax stordal made a great fit. love the birch finish.

"my wife and i love the malm furniture in our bedroom and needed to find replacement doors for our closet that would complement the furniture. i came across the pax stordal sliding door frames in the as-is department at ikea for $50.00 and bought six 1/8� baltic birch plywood panels for $2.99 each.

i cut the metal frame of the doors down to fit in the existing closet opening in our bedroom and then cut the plywood panels to fit the frame and applied three coats of polyurethane. i used the pax stordal hardware for the top and the existing sliding door hardware i had for the bottom. the side trim for the pax stordal doors was cut and used as a top trim piece on the finished project. the total cost of this hack was under $90.00 for great looking doors."

inspiration: statist tree towel rack

more eye candy. this is eric's bathroom after a gorgeous paint over. and the ikea statist trees as a towel holder completes the look.

see more of eric's diy bathroom wall painting.

sheer window curtain sun control

ikea's sheer window curtains look great but do little to block out the summer sun. here how you can cut out the glare, a tip sent in by stacy.

"i needed something to control light and glare, and that would be less 'officey' than the existing mini-blinds. i bought a pair of inexpensive wilma curtains, but they were a little bright for my taste. i toned them down by adding a second layer of fabric (a sheer tablecloth, cut in half), attached to the top of the curtain with a small cross-stitch beneath each tab."

calling for hackers in the NY area

you hack ikea?
you live in new york?

then, you could get you and your ikea hacks in the new york times. woohoo!

penelope green of the new york times' home and garden is doing a story on ikea hacking and wants to feature a few of us hackers in the flesh.

if you're interested, please drop me a line at ikeahacker [at] gmail [dot] com with your contact information as well as hacks you've done. it doesn't matter whether your hacks have or have not been featured on this site.

thanks!

make your own ikea video game furniture

i'm not much of a gamer but i like how one can build video game thingies into ikea furniture. like this computer mounted lack coffee table and ikea video game chair.

yos made this about 4 1/2 years ago before all the media transfer networking devices. his purpose was to stream music from his main computer to the home theater in his living room. he also installed old games on it so he could play old video games on the big screen.

yos writes: "back in 2001, during one of my weekly ikea trips, i grabbed another lack table and decided that i wanted to build a computer into an end table so that i could stream all my music into the living room. this was way before most of the easy digital music media centers. i cut a hole through the lack table only to understand why they are so light! i had to reinforce the inside of the lack table in order to mount the plexiglas box that i chose for my computer (small form-factor).

i painted some cut 2x4's and mounted them inside the lack table and then mounted the plexiglas computer inside. the computer had a second purpose - to play old school video games that did not run on my new computer. :) the computer was outfitted with a sound activated cold cathode neon blue light that pulsed the table to the music. this was finished up with a custom piece of beveled glass (not shown in the pictures). what a hit at parties!

click to view computer end table flickr photoset

when the easy media centers came about a couple years later (2003), i decided to migrate all the "guts" of the lack table plexiglas computer into this ikea video game chair (can't place the name and i can't find this anymore on ikea's site).

this was not only easier to gain access to the computer components, it was functional too. the chair maintains stability so you could pull it out and sit on it while playing old school computer games. this computer chair was also outfitted with a cold cathode neon light (red) so that this was also a hit at parties!

click to view video game chair flickr set.

both computers have been retired as computers, but still function as interesting art pieces at my new home."

rattan shelving

cherrie from netherlands sent in this lovely rattan shelving salvaged from a degernes rattan bed storage box.

"my husband and i once lived in a flat so small we HAD to have a sofa bed if we wanted a double bed at all. along with a beddinge sofa bed we bought along the degernes rattan bed storage box. when things improved, we moved to a decent sized flat where we could put a proper bed in the bedroom.

we had no use for the trundle box anymore, but i love the rattan on metal frames it�s made of. i reckoned they�re sturdy enough to support lightweight decoration items on, so i went back to ikea, picked up a couple of hall wall brackets, and mounted the rattan planks on top.

one of these shelves is now in our daughter�s nursery (pix above). it looks just perfect in the room. for additional safety, i inserted metal pegs (ones usually used as plank support in cupboards � sorry, i have no idea what those are properly called) into the screw holes, which fixed the plank to the brackets so you don�t accidentally pull the whole plank if you pull something on it.

i love it! it�s quite a bargain too, considering the box costs $40, and you get 4 planks in two different lengths to work with."

radiator cover up

nice idea to cover up unsightly radiators. edward's cover is made from a discarded hol storage cube and a lack wall shelf.