Time to put on some new skin

It's amazing what new skin can do to furniture. These from Anna of Forty Two Roads look simply gorgeous with new fabrics.

Anna writes, "I recently reupholstered some furniture in my house with Ikea fabric (from the As-Is bins, where I usually hunt for cool fabric pieces). I've really been loving the new patterned fabric that Ikea has been coming out with - and to get some pieces for cheap from the As-Is department is doubly awesome!"

The first is a rather straightforward redo of the Bonny/Verksam office chair, with googled "how to reupholster office chair" instructions.

See more of Anna's reupholstered office chair.

Next we have this rocking snail (inset) that's not so cool with the kid anymore. No fear. Snail grows up into a chic rocker. Anna shelled the snail and found that it had pretty cool-looking guts, which I totally agree. I think it would have made a sweet ride with just a coat of paint and a padded seat.

With more As-Is fabric goodies, Anna reupholstered the ride into this:

See more of Anna's chic rocker.

A desk job

Another workstation out to capture our hearts. Martin puts together this desk from the Effektiv range.

He says, "We painted our room and took out the cabinets. When we put them back we decided we wanted a bookcase at the right end and a desk in the middle. The cabinet that had been there was fitted only with one interior shelf and two doors. We did not reinstall the other wall cabinets.

I took apart the base unit and fitted the top of the cabinet in between the remaining cabinets at a desk height. The remaining pieces had to be shortened to fit between the cabinet and the wall. The base remained the base, but not attached to anything.

 

 

The sides of the original cabinet became the lower bookcase shelves. The interior shelf became the top shelf and matched the width of the upper cabinets. The doors had to be cut narrower and matched the width of the upper shelf.

All the pieces had finished edges which made them look like original fittings. I still have the back of the cabinet, but all 4 edges are unfinished."

How about this for a workstation?

Rob from Austin TX pulls off this gorgeous desk-bench-storage system, with clever use of the Effektiv storage cabinets, Effektiv doors, Lansa handles, and several lengths of the Pronomen Beech countertop material.

See more of Rob's desk-bench-storage system.

Red, blue, yellow, green? What colour do you want?

Marc tips me on this chameleon desk on Apartment Therapy's Unplggd.

Vince Welter adds the multicolour Dioder lighting strips to his Vika Lauri desk with frosted glass and aluminum sides. The lighting strips are placed towards the front. At a flip of a switch the light show starts.

See more on Unplggd or Vince's flickr set.

Make a Luminaria

Erica salvages a broken Iviken light with some paper.

She tells me, "I just hacked an Iviken light - I have two, but the glass broke on one. I didn't want to waste it so I followed some instructions on The Paper Studio website (see how to make a luminaria video), bought some paper, some double sided sticky tape and voila! My after shot of it doesn't do it justice. I got some nice hand made paper for $8, and have enough to do the other one. Do you think there is someone out there who needs a spare glass bit for their Iviken light?!"

Original Iviken

New Iviken

Spring Chick's to-die-for craft room

Once in a while I receive a craft room hack that turns me green, really really green. This is one of them. Lucky you, Kari!

Kari says, "I recently moved to a new house and am lucky enough to finally have a whole room for my crafting hobbies/business. I do a lot of sewing so I wanted a big, flat, and high (to save my back) work surface where I could lay out fabric. I also needed a lot of storage space.

My solution was to buy four Ikea base kitchen cabinets (2, 30" and 2, 18"). After assembling the cabinets, we (my husband and I) bolted them together on the bottom and added turned feet (to make it higher and prettier).

We flipped it right side up and built a top out of MDF. We covered the MDF with nice fabric (actually a shower curtain, for the width) which we stapled on underneath the edge.

We had a piece of glass cut to cover the whole top. As finishing touches, we added wood trim to hide the 'seams' between cabinets, glass knobs, and an Ikea rod (Bygel). I think it turned quite nicely and it functions just as I had hoped. A huge work surface (with a knee hole for sitting), with tons of storage underneath.

On the other side of the room, I needed a desk. We also used Ikea kitchen cabinet bases for this (one 24", one 18"), one side with drawers, one with a door. Then we just used the Ikea white kitchen counter top (Pragel) for the top. We also added feet and glass knobs to the desk. When I pulled up a chair to the desk, I realized that (duh!), this desk was higher than a regular desk, because it is counter height. Therefore, I had to go buy a counter height stool (Ikea Henriksdal). I modified their standard cover by sewing on a little Ikea fabric (Fredrika) around the bottom for a more custom look."

How about a mini chest tool box?

I've seen many hacks on the Fira mini chest, most of them decorative, so this one from PK Shiu is a new take on it. It turns out to be a pretty neat looking tool box but methinks it needs a coat of red.

He says, "A 10-minute hack to turn a plain looking Fira mini chest into a high tech looking tool box for my electronic parts."

PK simply added Kosing handles to the top of the chest. Measure the centre line of the small drawers against the top piece of the chest (if not, the drawers will get stuck.) Screw in the handles (he added 4 washers as the screws were too long) before assembling the chest as usual.

See more of PK Shiu's high tech mini chest tool box.

Check out PK Shiu's previous hacks:
- Magiker shoe cabinet
- Self-watering plant pot