Loft bed frame and elevated laptop stand

Materials: MALM and Magasin

Description: Here are two of my Ikea hacks.

The first is a bed frame I made…

I recently moved from a house into a small apartment, and needed somewhere to store all of my things, but still wanted a clean, clutter-free look. Ikea had the answer. I simply found a chest of drawers that I liked from Ikea, and bought four of them – the MALM 3 drawer chest. I then built a simple bed frame to sit on top, and turned it into bed with 50 cubic feet of storage space underneath (including the drawers)!!

The frame wasn’t hard to build:
I measured a queen sized mattress, and cut large pieces of lumber to fit around that. Those exterior pieces of lumber were reinforced in the corners. Then I got smaller pieces of wood (2×2’s, I think) and attached them so they’d run along each inside edge of those exterior pieces. Then I placed 2×4’s on top of those runners, and they reached from one end of the frame to the other, acting as slats for the platform. Once the slats were in place, I just placed a large piece of chip board on top! I also added a couple other finishing touches, such as adding small pieces of wood to the inside edges of the chest of drawers, where I cut out a notch, which I used to hang a small curtain on a dowel to hide the spaces.

My second hack is a laptop stand…

This hack is extremely easy. I simply started with a Magasin wooden dish drainer from Ikea, and cut off the longer supporting legs on the “back” side. Then I attached it to a wall using Command 3M small wire hooks, and voila!! I used 5 of these strips because I wanted to be sure it would support the weight of my laptop. I really like the look of a floating laptop, and this dish drainer worked perfectly.

I can also remove the laptop stand from the wall completely if I wish, or fold it up completely. Or, I can fold the top portion up and use it to support a text book on the lower portion. Or finally, I place the laptop on the top portion, and either fold up the bottom portion, or use it to store my mouse, wireless keyboard, etc. Very versatile!

See more photos here.

~ Angie Andrade, Stillwater, OK