Alex gets a facelift

Jessica gives her Alex drawer unit a facelift.

"I changed my white Ikea Alex to better suit my decorating tastes." The drawer units were first given a thorough paint job with spray paint. When dry, she mod podged the front panels with scrapbooking paper.

Her instructions are here.

Hide your cables in a Vattern

This is neat. Paul hides a stash of cables and switches inside the Vattern bathroom cabinet.

"In a corner of my room I've fixed my router, the switch and the cables on the wall. It was quite practical but it looked ugly.

Two months later I found in the "bargain corner" two doors of the Vattern series. Later I bought two basic elements of the Vattern series. The result is a beautiful and nice litte cupboard which hides router, switch, cables and all the other stuff. I didn't connect the elements, but it is still possible to do so by using screws. Finally I fixed four litte cabinet feet, so that the doors can open easily."

Billy revisited

I like doors on my cabinets to keep the dust away, so I totally dig what Massimo did to his low single Billy.

"My goal was to realize a little cabinet nearby the entrance of my living room. I just bought a Billy frame and two little doors made for the height extension unit. The problem is the frame holes don't match with the doors mechanism. After measuring the best placement of shelves and doors all together, I drilled eight new holes with a 5 mm drill bit to fix the pivots. The result is a brand new cabinet (width: 40 cm, depth: 28 cm, height: 106 cm) with an open shelf completed by a little wicker basket (perfect to empty my pockets) and two nice compartments to change the bookshelf look of Billy system."

Finally, an ergonomic desk!

Joel and Mandy

"We had an old Ikea desk that wasn't ergonomic. In fact, none of the desks at Ikea are ergonomic! So we decided to build one ourselves using Vika parts (Furusund, Byske, Fintorp) and created a nifty second tier on top by mounting two Knuff magazine files sideways. The end result is a desk with tabletop cubbies, hidden wires, a top drawer charging station, and a hot, sliding keyboard tray. And did I mention it's ergonomic?"

The old desk

Ikea Furusund

And the complete new ergonomic desk

Here is the Flickr photo set with instructions. Check out the video of them putting the hack together too.



Other desk jobs:
- This is no wallflower
- Study and dog room remodel
- Laundry room desk
- Cozy workstation for tiny alcove

DJ turntable setup out Ikea media center

David salvages an old Ikea media unit and whips it into a DJ desk.

"I was looking for a desk to house a pair of Technics 1200 turntables. They're fairly wide, so most desks don't accommodate them. DJ desks can come in at around $600, which is far more than I wanted to spend. I had this Ikea media center I bought in 2006 that almost fit, but not quite. So I bought some lumber from Home Depot, stained it, and attached it. It was about $26 in lumber and only took an afternoon to assemble. The key is that the top of the media center popped off, so I could attach the posts securely. It may be similar to Linnarp, but I can't find the exact model. The top part of the media center is part of the original Ikea unit. (solid pine). The posts and the top surface of the desk are from Home Depot."

Grono lamp that's a tune

Another lamp to brighten your day. This one is from Tom. Aah ... reminds me of my old mix tapes.

"I saw this on Gizmodo and thought 'I can do that! It turns out the Grono table lamp is exactly on cassette tape width wide. All you do is lay out a 4x4 grid of tapes (missing one for the cable to come out) and tape them together with clear sticky tape. Then just fold it around your Grono lamp and you're done."

Rimfrost table lamp

Iris makes a big bold light for her room by mating 2 Ikea lamps together.

"As a renter, I find it difficult to hang ceiling lamps in an attractive way without either permanent damage or cords everywhere. And so, I hacked together an Ikea Rimfrost ceiling chandelier shade, with another Ikea lamp shade, and an Ikea Januari lamp base to turn the ceiling lamp into a table lamp. The only additional materials the hack required was a bit of wire, to combine the two shades together. My step-by-step photos are here. But it's essentially a really simple hack."