hackeas: ideas that make you go 'why didn't i think of that!'

this hackea post is about quick and snappy repurposing. no big hack but neat ideas nonetheless.

slim solutions for narrow hallways
paula has a long narrow hallway that needed some lighting and storage. here's what she did.

she says, "i had a long narrow hallway with 2 wall sconces. i was looking for a low profile lighting sconce and found these lock ceiling lamps. i painted the white bases with gold spray paint and wall mounted them. for the opposite wall i bought 2 three packs of trones shoe storage and mounted them side by side. the books are held by invisible bookshelves from the whitney museum.

simple clothes hanger
paul repurposes a shelf bracket for his shirts. he says, "the short story behind this is that a while ago i had a rather large ikea wardrobe that took up quite a bit of visual as well and physical space. because it was a bit aesthetically jarring i was looking for other smaller and simpler options. i looked at a lot of the clothes storage systems at ikea but couldn't find anything minimalistic enough. when i was walking through the store one day (perversely not buying just looking!) .... i saw the slinga shelf bracket and thought it would make a good hanging rail for the clothes. a few screws and wall plugs later and voila. it's been completely stable and frees up a lot more visual space while hanging the same amount of clothes as previously."

summer lovin' place mats
andrea uses place mats instead of table cloths for camping. she says, "this past summer my vinyl camping table cloth wore out and i couldn't find a replacement that i liked. while in the as-is area at ikea, i found a bin loaded with place mats (possibly from the amulett or hurra range), shrink-wrapped in sets of four for like 95 cents. they are made of a stiff plastic-like material.

i bought a package to use on the picnic table when camping until i found a table cloth. as it turns out, i like them better for camping than table cloths or those floppy vinyl place mats you can get at other stores.

they clip into place with a table cloth clip (the silver piece each one has on it in the photos). as you see in the photos, i can re-position them on the table as i need them, so it isn't a big deal that they don't cover the whole table. it's much easier to clean the back side than a table cloth. they are much more durable and they look sooo much nicer than a red-checked table cloth (which i'm not crazy about)."

hopen to store all your dvds?

daniel, a self-professed slave to the ikea lifestyle, and a hacker by heart, has repurposed the hopen dresser into a hip dvd cabinet.

he says, "i really liked the hopen dressers, and when i saw them at ikea, i noticed the semi-transparent glass, and started getting ideas. a large format printer, some 3600 DPI scans, some Office Depot poster roll paper, and about two days of construction, and you get this."

see daniel's instructions for the hopen dvd storage.

sandrine's show and tell

sandrine means craft queen in french. okay, it doesn't but after seeing the bunch of stuff she sent me - all crafted from ikea items - i am inclined to think that way. i am especially taken by the tindra candle collages. aren't they just so fun?

she says, "my name is sandrine. i live in nantes, france and i do things like these...

the magnetic frames bubbla are decorated with a collage of photos cut from magazines.

the pillow aina is intended for a girl who likes purple. the horse is decorated with ends of fabrics (tissues), pearls and glitter stuck onto it.

cut out collages of photos and pictures from magazines varnished onto the tindra and tindra ljuv. more here and here.

the pillow hanna (can't find the link on ikea's website) is transformed into an owl, using fabric (tissues), some wool and buttons. on one side is the first name of the girl to whom it was intended.

visit sandrine's blog (it's in french) to see more do-it-yourself goodies.

crochet table decorations

have dinner guests and want to pretty up your table? if you can crochet, here's one quick hack from marion.

she writes, "for last year's silvester-party i needed a bit more sparkle on my table, we had more people than usual, so i had to bring out my long table cloth that i hardly ever use... and of course i had no fitting table decoration.

so i picked two galej from my shelf, picked beads and a thin silvery wire (more filament than wire, probably) and an equally thin crochet hook.... and crocheted these covers for the glasses.

they were rather quickly done (one evening watching TV each), didn't cost anything because i had everything at hand and they are removable. my guests liked it."

fancy lamp at a down to earth price

gun brooke creates a column lighting from ikea curtains. be sure to treat the fabric to fire retardant sprays to minimize fire hazard.

he says, "i used curtains from ikea to create a column lighting that i’ve seen in a fancy lamp store (cost a fortune there!) and i figured i could make it. i took steel wire and made a circle. before i closed it, i threaded two thin ikea curtains on it. (i think the curtain i used is out of production, but you can use either wilma or sarita – both very inexpensive.)

i then let the wires run across the circle, making a loop in the middle to be able to hook it to the ceiling. i hung cheap christmas lights in the center, across the wire. and there you go! looks pretty much exactly like the expensive one i saw in the fancy store!"

an armoire to organize craft supplies

i love the idea of adding an interesting back panel to cabinets, so kimberly's hack on a plain pine stranda wardrobe (left) is really working for me.

first, she stained the pine black and layered on polyurethane. then, kimberly wrapped the fiberboard back with a few yards of vintage black and white print fabric. the wardrobe was then assembled as per instructions.

the final touches were the hardware on the doors - hammered, silver knobs from anthropologie. nice!

wrapping the back board with fabric

the cabinet assembled

organizing it into a craft cabinet

one good looking craft armoire!

click to see more of kimberly's craft armoire and instructions.

glam up your glimt

tanya hung antique crystals on her glimt pendant lamp and what a difference it makes!



(Updated July 21, 08)

Christie's version of the Cellula Chandelier
She says, "I have long coveted the Cellula Chandelier from Design Within Reach (pic right) ... (with it's $2200 price tag it was out of the question). I found the Glimt at Ikea and crafted my own version of the Cellula that is pretty darn close. Below are photos of an up close of my version, and a glimpse of it hanging in my room!

What I did to make it:
1) Bought the 6 light Glimt for $79.99
2) Assembled the light, omitting the glass shades that cover the bulbs
3) Scoured Ebay for crystals in various sizes (I bought a couple big lots of them all for less than $100)
4) Used clear fishing line to hang the crystals at various lengths

The Glimt is meant to be a low hanging table chandelier, so I did have to do some surgery to the electrical wires that hang the fixture to get it as close to the ceiling as I have it hanging.

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.

selamat design offer and a chat with date my house hosts

this is a totally off tangent post. no hacks. not ikea either. :O but don't go away, it is still good stuff.

selamat designs wrote me and asked whether they could pass on a tidy little discount to my readers. well, who could say not to discounts? certainly not the bargain hunter in me. i checked out their site first, of course and their furniture pieces are pretty interesting. living in malaysia, i've seen rattan done to death but selamat designs have given this traditional material some degree of freshness, ie. the bon adventure collection (first row, left pic).

check out their site. to get your 10% discount on any purchase at selamat designs, you'll need to enter the coupon code SELAMATSPRING

next on the list, i was recently invited to a bloggers only teleconference with date my house hosts, nadia gellar and bob guiney. the point of the show is to help sellers up the desirability of their homes in the eyes of buyers. see their top 10 rules for dating a house.

i did ask nadia and bob about the value of having ikea furniture in the home ... well, sad to say, it won't let you win big. but if you use your ikea furniture wisely and make it work, it won't turn off your date. they do caution against using conspicuously ikea pieces too, why? check out the call.

i had some trouble with the numbers and was late for the call ... 13 minutes into it. also be warned, it is 50 mins long and dotted with lots of pauses (some i thought rather uncomfortable). it's my first (so, no stars for performance there) but i learned quite a bit about how difficult it really is to ask good questions. i never thought so, till i hear myself now and it's 'slap-my-forehead' urgh. still it was fun. if you think i speak funny, that's because i speak 'manglish'. hah!

rose wardrobe closet

jenn is a thriftshop maven who salvaged this ikea wardrobe (name unknown) and added a burst of 'yesteryear romance' to it.

she says, "my ikea freestanding wardrobe was a totally plain piece before i did decorative painting (stencil) on it and changed out the knobs."

click to see more of jenn's wardrobe.