one hack of a cover up

magdalena's dad made this metal and glass structure from a kludd glass noticeboard (can't find it on the website) and bits magnetic boards to cover heating pipes in the ceiling.

she says, "as you can see on the first picture, we had a little problem at my house: some heating pipes were lower than the actual ceiling. we didn't want to lower the whole suffit and we don't care for some white lower structure just to cover the pipes either.

so my dad came with the idea of using panels to cover the pipes. in order to make it look cool we added some light and one glass panel.

the result: really cool suffit , it looks like Star Trek. we used one kludd panel and all others are grey bits panels."

stitch witch to the rescue

your paper lamp shade shredded to bits? try karen's no-sew hack.

she says, "after an unfortunate placement of a cool mist humidifier too close to my skyar floor lamp, i replaced the torn paper shade with a fabric shade. this is a no-sew hack using about 3 yards of Stitch Witch (heat activated hem tape). i had about 1.5 yards of the fabric and used the paper shade as my template for measuring the fabric for cutting (adding 1" to each side for a hem). i created a simple 1" hem lengthwise and then hemmed around the top and bottom rings of the lamp using the Stitch Witch. took about 20 minutes starting from dismantling the existing lamp to turning it on when i was done."

gather round the breakfast bar

cathi finds an easy to clean solution for her kitchen island breakfast counter.

cathi says, "i decided i wanted to construct a kitchen island out of the ikea varde base cabinet. we wanted something that we could gather the whole family at for breakfast, that would up the fancy factor in our kitchen and make clean up a breeze. this is it. we took out the drawers and screwed 3/4" exterior grade plywood to the top, and installed granite tiles to the top (much cheaper than a slab of granite!) added a bull-nose to the edge and viola! a pretty sharp looking island, if i do say so myself."

before

after

duvet cover to jacket

shawnee takes a kid-sized duvet cover to the machine and out comes this hippo jacket. (jacket pattern here)

thanks shopping sherpa! (via craftzine)

as-is: bar table with 3 stools going for $35

alex tipped me on this craigslist find - a hacked ikea bar table with stools. okay, it is not the best looking bar table around, but it is a steal.

the table is hacked from a malm 3 drawer chest with an ikea table top. the bar is a bit wobbly and needs a cross brace (available at ikea for $7) but hey, for that price you'll expect some kinks.

click to see the original craigslist post.

under counter cd storage

carlos and girlfriend gave each other a set of cordless tools as a mutual christmas present. they also live in an all-ikea apartment, the only exception being their couch. so a drill does comes in handy.

carlos syas, "we live in a 1-bedroom apartment where the living room and kitchen share one large space together.

we rearranged the living room but had no room for our robin cd/dvd shelves. our kitchen island has a small overhang that protrudes into the living room and we thought 'why not flip them (the shelves) on their side?'


the width of the two stacked units was exactly the height of the space under the overhang. we cut off the legs from each units and used some of the shelves to create cubbyholes on the now horizontal shelves which also created enough room to stand our dvds on each shelf instead of laying them flat. in the end we didn't have to cut anything! my girlfriend was a little sad she didn't get to use our new cordless circular saw but the cordless drill has paid for itself with this hack."

the well lit living room

mike does a little light makeover - replacing an old track light in his living room with 5 regolit pendant lamps.

he says, "we started with 5 of the regolit lamps and build a framework out of mdf to hide a powerbar and all the cords. the mdf panel is mounted to the ceiling through 4 2x4s put together as a frame, offsetting the mdf 3" from the ceiling.

putting up the centre lamp

the mdf with shims

there are some shims attached to the mdf that helped us align the mdf against the 2x4s. took 3 people to hold up the mdf and screw it into the 2x4 frame.

more pictures and instructions on mike's living room lights.