Play kitchen and market stall

Materials: Rast nightstand, Attest handles, Ribba picture ledge, plywood, screws, steamer bowls, faucet, paint, plexi, hinges and lots of small things

Description: Present for my twins - that's why a simple kitchen was not enough

I turned the Rast night stand around for both the play kitchen and the market stall.

Kitchen
I added an extra shelf and a divider to create space for the oven and the refrigerator. The worktop and the back of the kitchen are plywood cut to size. For the oven door I cut a hole out and added plexi, hinges and a magnetic closure. A piece of thin plywood painted glossy black with silver circles is the stove, the sink is a steamer bowl. I used the smallest faucet I could find.

All the wooden parts for the kitchen are painted white, the inside of the oven is grey. A LED-light is attached in the oven and there is a baking sheet made of painted plywood. The stove knobs are wooden circles painted in silver. The whole stove front - where the stove knobs are - can be openend for extra storage space. The refrigerator has a shelf inside made out of a piece of Ribba picture ledge. All handles and knobs are Attest. There are handles on each side to hang the oven gloves and towels but also to be able to carry the play kitchen out of the way if necessary. Another Attest handle serves as a rail for hanging up kitchen utensils. The top shelf is a wooden box glued to the back wall. The clock was a must because every kitchen needs to have a clock.

Market stall
I added an angular shelf in the middle of the night stand for the display of the wooden crates. A piece of plywood cut to size serves as counter-top. There is a small steamer bowl with a lid sunk in the counter top to keep the fish fresh :-). Attest handles on either side of the market stall so it can be easily carried out of the way.

The roof construction was made out of two beams cut to the right length on either side of the Rast and two beams screwed in a slightly inclined angle. To stabilize the roof construction and for attaching the fabric roof I used three round wooden bars. The fabric roof is sewn to fit and can be removed easily if it ever has to be washed. The market stall has some storage space accessible from the back for storing bags etc.

~ Gabi L�mmli, Switzerland

Workstation Wallmount - Ikea + Mac Mini = Win

Materials: Besta Burs DVD Wall Unit

Description: I moved recently and wanted to make a nice "workstation" for my Mac Mini. I use the computer like a TV; Netflix and other Internet media. I don't do much (any) work on it.

I saw the Ikea Besta Burs wall-mounted drawer, and it got me thinking. The piece has a single fold down drawer, it's meant to hold DVDs. But in non-typical Ikea fashion, this thing is massively overbuilt. The hinges are really heavy duty. And the particle board shelf is relatively shallow and therefore strong.

I needed to drill holes for passing cables through. I bought a drill and a special bit to drill large holes. I gave the holes a classy look by purchasing some plastic caps that let the wires go through. Home Depot had all these things.

I did the wire hole drilling on my balcony before assembling the unit, supporting the pieces between two chairs. In order to not bung up the nice glossy surface I left the plastic protective cover on while drilling, also start the drill by plunging into the glossy surface. Inevitably you well end up pushing through the last bit of wood, it's much better that this happens on the surface you don't care so much about. Also make sure you measure where you want the holes to be!!

Finding the studs in the wall in order to anchor this beast was hard. I used a "stud finder" but as I repeated my measurements with different speeds and directions, I found my stud location varied quite a bit ... Also, IKEA doesn't space the pre-drilled holes at the standard US stud spacing (16 inches). I was able to stretch fit two of the holes, and use two studs.

The third hole landed solidly in between two studs, so I used a drywall toggle bolt. This bolt requires you to drill a biiiig hole, in order to pass through the spring-loaded metal wings. These wings snap out when they get to the other side of the wall. When you tighten the bolt, the wings press against the back side of the wall allowing you to tighten down pretty hard. Make sure when you push the wings through, you don't accidentally let the whole screw fall behind the wall! I made a "custom" washer to keep this from happening using a bit of cereal-box derived cardboard with a slit in it.

I set the height such that the bottom of the unit was counter height. Originally I had planned on using a bar stool, but this would have meant the monitors were so high it would have been uncomfortable to watch videos from my couch.

You definitely need a helper to get this baby onto the wall, it's much too big and heavy to do by yourself when you need one hand for the screw driver.

It looks soooo sweet! The glossy finish gives it a high tech look, and nearly all wires are hidden from view. There was enough space for me to include my external hard drive, router, two powerbars, Mac Mini, keyboard and mouse etc all inside the drawer. However I rarely use the keyboard and mouse, instead I use Tight VNC to control the Mac Mini wirelessly from my laptop. In order to control the stereo from the couch, I bought a Sound Blaster XLive USB sound card and a 25 ft usb cable. It was a gamble the Mini's usb ports could power this devices, especially with the long cable, but it's working great. All in all I'm very happy with the result, and at about $100, it's a great value.

See more of the wall mounted work station for Mac Mini

~ Shaun Bowman, Ann Arbor, MI

Ivar Stand-up Music Cueing Desk / Drafting Table

Materials: Ikea Ivar components, Staples BookLift Copyholder, project wood, brackets and screws, power drill, level

Description: I'm a cellist who is a member of a professional string quartet (lydianquartet.com) and cello piano duo (ghduo.com), as well as a guest player with many different chamber music groups. As a result of all this conductorless work I can spend many hours studying scores and marking cues in cello parts so that I know who has the primary voice, when to come in after many bars of rest, whose part or voice I'm together with, etc.. While some musicians are going digital and playing from full score on either laptops or iPads, I still like the old fashioned method of making markings using pencil on sheet music, especially for those emergency calls when I'm asked to fill in for somebody last minute.

As that has meant many hours hunched over sitting at the kitchen table (not a good thing for my lower back, along with New England snow), I read about the value of stand-up desks and decided to see if I could reconfigure my now 20 year old Ivar setup in my home office.

I repositioned the worktable at a higher level and in tilt position, then screwed in a plastic copyholder at the upper end and two project pine strips from Lowes on the bottom to hold sheet music, pencils, highlighters, etc. As we have an old house, I used a level when I put in the strips, so I let ergonomics win out over aesthetics (yeah, it's crooked). The copyholder can be removed if I want to use the full drafting table as its screw is angled.

I may eventually get rid of the Ivar unit and go with track shelves for a little more space in this tiny room (Rakks.com makes a nice folding wall mounted drafting table), but this is a start. Hopefully my back will thank me.

~ Joshua Gordon, Massachusetts, USA

Lil' BILLY Mobile Research Lab

Materials: Mini BILLY Bookcase (800.857.07), UPPT�CKA Shopping Bag w/ Wheels (501.927.37)

Description: As part of interdisciplinary research project between Artists and Anthropologists at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden, we created this Lil' Billy Mobile Research Lab. Lil BILLY features a set of interlocking stools, two shelves, a battery operated LED light, and a rolling cart to make it portable. It also features a custom all IKEA tea set for use during our conversations with our research subjects - BILLY Bookcase owners in Stockholm, Sweden.

The modifications are minimal but include cutting out space for the shopping cart wheels, which happened to be exactly the same width as the small BILLY, making the base support slightly taller and moving the bottom shelf up to accommodate the rolling cart height. We made the stools out of extra BILLY parts, left over from the first assignment in our class - buying a BILLY bookcase and bringing it to class on the first day for assembly.

We made two copies of this Hack, one that we rolled around during our research and one that the Kungens Kurva IKEA created a custom flat pack box for.

More information about the project can be found at this link.

~ John Freyer, Stockholm, Sweden

Jars of light

Materials: Inreda, Jam Jars

Description: This is a fairly basic hack, so don't be put off by complex electrics... I started out with 2 packs of Inreda cabinet lighting (I think these are the old style that come with small bulbs, rather than LED's and have 3 in a pack).

1. You first need to take these lights apart so all you have left is the cable, socket, bulb and black grommet that holds the cable.

2. Having collected and thoroughly cleaned the jam jars, drill a hole in the lid (8mm in this case).

3. Rebuild the lighting using the lid to mount the grommet that holds the wire.

You may also notice the shelves are a Stolmen hack similar to this Stolmen-Jarpen shelves hack.

Although I originally saw this idea at a design event in Newcastle, I should also give credit to this previous hack

~ Pods, Newcastle

Gerbils Haven

Materials: Expedit 4x2

Description: My girlfriend really wanted some kind of pet. Guinea pigs would be fine... something like that. As I'm an aesthete - at least think to be - the hutch had to fit in the living room nicely. An Expedit meets my requirements, but is too small for guinea pigs. It wasn't too hard to convince her of Gerbils (first look: "sweeeeeeeeet" *g*).

The Expedit has to contain the hutch and the things one needs to care for his rodents. I decided to use 3/4 for the hutch.

For three apartments two small cubicles are combined. The Expedit boards spanning two cubicles can be used vertically or horizontally.

Wire netting in the upper part keeps the rodents from too much freedom. Each apartment gets a drawer with a glass front for easy cleaning.

As the rodents shouldn't jump from one floor to the other, tubes would solve that issue fine.

Therefore I cut 4 holes in the right side and two in the middle board.

Updated: 8 June. My bad. I didn't notice that the hack was submitted in 2 parts. So click the link below for Part II. ~ Jules 



I used a "Lochkreiss�ge" - I really couldn't find the name in english:

Each hole is 75mm in diameter. To keep the rodents what they are used to, I fitted in pieces of drain pipe.

The netting wire holds in place in a slot and on the upper side with magnets.

Don't forget a back plane, I used 4mm wallboard.

Looks pretty nice, eh?

You can find a documentation in german in 4 little articles on my homepage. See more of the Gerbil haven - and also my 4 new roomies.

~ Stephan, Dresden, Germany

Laser etched Malma frame

Materials: 1 Malma pine 10" square mirror + 1 laser etching machine

Description: This hack is pretty simple and straight forward. I just laser-etched flower graphics onto the pine frame.

See more of the laser etched Malma.

~ Manny Torres, Los Angeles