And we have an IKEA hack of 2010 winner!

Big congratulations and a round of applause to thedesignguy for winning the IKEA Hack of 2010!

His hack the Pax sliding door room divider was a clear favourite from the start. At some point, G.V.M's Bedroom dress boys almost overtook it but at the last lap, the Pax sliding door room divider pulled away to win big, with over 28% votes. The dressboys garnered 19% votes, with the Ultimate twin highchair at 16%. For me, every hack in the Top 10 list is way excellent and you did awesome.

This year, I am also super happy that we crossed the 5 thousand votes mark, hitting a grand total of 5,283 votes, up from last year's 4059. Thank you, thank you, everyone who picked your favourite and made your choice known.  

As a small token from me, thedesignguy wins two of Jonathan Adler's latest books, Happy Chic Accessorizing and Happy Chic Colours.

See the IKEA Hack of the Year poll results.

Bedroom Side Table

Materials: Two, white, wooden Ikea storage bins, dark stain, hinges, screws, glass knobs (optional), and contact paper (optional).

Description: We have a relatively small apartment and we are always looking for ways to store our "stuff". There was an unused space in our bedroom and two wooden Ikea bins taking up space in our closet and viola, our Ikea hack was born. I planned to make a side table out of the bins. It would turn out to be a lot cheaper than buying a brand new one and more my style anyway.

First, I took apart the bins and removed the back wooden panel. I replaced it with a large piece of cardboard, which I covered with Magic Cover contact paper. Then, I put the bins back together. I stacked them, one on top of the other and nailed them together. Then I painted the panel I removed with a dark stain I had lying around the house. After it dried, I used some left over hinges to screw the panels onto the front as doors. I also made use of two magnet hinges I had to keep the front doors closed. To finish it off, I affixed two glass knobs to the front.

Because I didn't use a drill, it took me more time than I thought totaling five hours. I would urge all others to use a small drill to pre-drill the holes for the screws, but you can also do this with some screws and a screw driver like I did.

See more of the bedroom side table.

~ Janina R. Williams, Chicago

IKEA LEGO Table

Materials: Ramvik

Description: When I moved in I bought an IKEA Ramvik table and while travelling this summer I had an idea (don't ask why): decorate its top with Lego bricks used as pixels. Here are the steps I went through. If you don't care about those steps and want to see a nice time-lapse video, scroll to the end of the article!

Lego bricks

First things first. What are the Lego brick sizes and colors available? Oddly enough this question is not that easily answered. Probably because Lego's site is crappy, or because nobody really cares... I eventually found Brickipedia which happens to be a much richer resource than the official ones. Everything I was looking for was there: the Lego "unit" is 8 millimeters and the color palette is pretty simple.

Table specs

Knowing my table size I had various options, depending on the "pixel size" I'd choose. Of course the number of bricks (and the price) would also vary. So I created a dynamic spreadsheet on Google Docs that'd do the calculations for me...

I chose the 4x4 option, quite cheap and still offering a cool number of pixels.


Design

36x16 pixels of freedom, that's it. I tried lots of different designs, from lo-fi photos to pixel-art drawings. I decided to go for a Heavy Oblique Futura.

Looking good.

The Lego palette

I set my type to white, on a black background. The anti-aliasing process creates gray-scale pixels to smooth the curves, which is great, but Lego bricks aren't available in all colors! To have a realistic preview of what it would look like I had to create a Photoshop Color Table matching Lego's gray-scales.

You may notice that Lego's black is a little bit light and the grays are yellowish.

Time to order bricks!

Already? Nope, not that fast. Before ordering I had to know exactly what to order, that means counting the pixels. Well, I'm not this kind of guy. I'm a developer; I hate repetitive chores, you know.

So I fired up Flash Builder and came up with PaletteCounter a simple, OpenSource, app to count pixels of each color. I also added some kind of "assembly instructions generator" to help us build it. Handy.

Time to order!

Really? Yup. I placed an order on lego.com's Pick A Brick and received it a couple of weeks later. Yay!

Let's do this

I'm not going to describe the process (that happened this saturday), just have a look at this time-lapse vid. 1020 pics shot in about an hour, yummy.

See more of the Lego table .

~ Quentin, Bordeaux, France

Sofia Stripes on an Expedit Shelf

Materials: Expedit shelf, Sophia fabric

Description: It was super basic- I just trimmed some $.99/yard Sophia striped fabric to the size of the Expedit shelf.

I temporarily taped the edges of the fabric onto the back of the shelf to figure out where I needed to cut holes for the cords of the printer, modem, xbox, etc.
After the holes were neatly cut, I simply used hot glue to affix the fabric to the back of the shelf, keeping the fabric stripes in line with the lines of the shelves.

I then trimmed the edges so that it does not stick out from behind the shelf.

See more of the striped Expedit back.

~ Laura, South Carolina

Jewelry Displays (recycled Ikea mirrors)

Materials: Malma mirrors

Description: I covered the wooden frames of two Malma mirrors with fancy wallpapers and then screwed different kinds of hooks into them, to turn them into jewelry displays.

~ BeaG, Belgium

DIY TV Riser

Materials: NORTORRP shelves, CAPITA legs

Description: Needed to raise my TV about 6-8" and did tons of research online and it seems most home theatre guys make their own out of MDF. Since I'm not very handy, I decided to try to look for an IKEA solution. I got some inspiration from how other people made monitor stands out of shelving and legs so off I went.

I used Ikea's NORRTORP shelving since it is solid pine (the EKBY JARPEN was my second choice, but it is particle board), and 6" CAPITA legs. With the shelving and legs, the TV was raised 7". The total cost was $70, but the NORRTORP set comes with another shelf so I can use that for another project.

I temporarily fastened a second set of legs in anticipation of getting a new center channel speaker to place under the TV. This way I can rearrange the legs later to make sure the legs don't get in the way.

See more of the DIY TV riser.

~ Kevin

LaivaPax Coffee Table

Materials: Laiva TV Stand, Pax Wardrobe door

Description: I picked up a Pax Fevik wardrobe panel in the as-is section for $5. A couple months later, I picked up the Laiva TV stand for $20. I used some 1x3 lumber to make a support frame to raise the Pax panel a few inches above the Laiva. With the lumber and hardware used to make the support frame, the total cost was less than $35.

That cost went up a bit after a recent IKEA visit, when I picked up a Dioder light set on sale for $30, giving me a glass top coffee table that lights up from with.

More details and photos can be seen at on my Flickr page.

~ Larry Mac, Richmond VA