Ikea Rast Cabinet Hack Project

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Most of us know that IKEA is a great place for furniture that is easy to assemble, it's affordable and it can fit a lot of shapes and spaces but there is a community of people who take it one step further.  IKEA hackers use incredibly simple ideas to modify, repurpose and customize IKEA furniture and give it a personal twist to turn a mass produced item into something that's one of a kind.

Upcycled Door Project

Image: Babble

When one door closes, another one opens.
Or you can just open the closed door... that's how doors tend to work.

Or is it?

Play Kitchen Project

Images: Baby Centre

Anytime Jaws is on TV (and I'm able to) - I must sit down and watch it.

With an incredible number of memorable scenes and quotes it's easy to understand why it's in most people's top 10 movie lists.

- The terrifying opening attack.
- The scar contest on the Orca - ‘Mary Ellen Moffit, she broke my heart’.
- The Indianapolis Speech.
- "Here's to swimming with bow-legged women".
- The zoom in/dolly out shot on Chief Brody at the beach.
- Mrs Kintner slapping Brody hard in the face.
- The chalkboard scratch.
- "We're going to need a bigger boat!".

The list could go on and on but there is one scene that will always stand out.

Pallet Jack Project

Image: Tres Chere

Why has the Union Jack become such a fashion icon?

Well, because it's iconic.

Fashion designers and now interior designers (across the pond, I might add) have embraced Cool Britannia and emblazoned everything from painted furniture, art prints, clothing, rugs, and pillows with a blast of bold red, white and blue.

Weathered Wood Project

My obsession with making things from pallets continued this week when I made these vintage style crates and display trays for the Honest2Goodness market, which takes place every Saturday and Wednesday in Glasnevin.

Vintage Crates

Image: Patent Pending Projects

 Display Trays

Image: Patent Pending Projects

The 'vintage style' element of the crates was pretty easy to achieve as the the wood used was fairly weathered already. However, what if you are using relatively new wood and need to create that old worn look?

Stencilled Table Project

So it's time to get a new dinner table. Or is it?

Unless your table is on it's last legs, literally and figuratively, then I urge you to consider all possibilities before posting it on Free Trade, abandon it in a skip, or in my case, reclaiming any wood worth saving.

There are lots of tutorials and how-to's when it comes to restoring furniture but this idea is one of the simplest and more effective ways to help revive an old piece of furniture, saving you the need to replace it.

Stencilled Table

Image: Design*Sponge

Here's what you'll need:

Transforming a Dresser Project

About 4 years ago we moved house.

We moved from a nice, homely, small apartment to a nice, homely, small house. The only major difference was now the stairs, at least, were inside the home.

We didn't have much stuff and everything went in one van. With a couple of friends helping out we were all done and dusted in an hour or two.

Except for one thing. The dresser. Which would not fit up the stairs.

A few years earlier we had bought this huge dresser. 5 big drawers for her, 5 big drawers for me. And now it stood slap bang in the centre of our 'parlour sized' living room like a big sore thumb. That's if your idea of a big sore thumb was 5ft x 4ft x 2ft and made of solid wood.

There were late night discussions. "Do we take a window out?" "Should we remove the banister rail?" and of course the dreaded, "I could cut a bit off and try and put it back together?"

Eventually, a friend commented, removing one or two of the threads in our staircase might give the extra half a foot needed to maneuver it up. Luckily, when removing the carpet and underlay we found we had just enough room to force it up with minimal damage to wall and dresser. I would be painting the wall in time anyway but I would have to repair any damage to the dresser.

That was 4 years ago. I still haven't fixed it.
But now, I think it's time.

I've found 6 great ideas to transform different types of dresser.

Below are the Before & After photos followed by a link to the website on how to achieve the look.

1. Distressed Dresser

                        Before                                                                                               After

Image: Miss Mustard Seed

Image: Miss Mustard Seed

Jump over to Miss Mustard Seed for the details.


2. Ikea-hack Dresser.

Image: Gravy Train

Image: Gravy Train

 Jump over to Gravy Train for the details.


3. Adding Fabric to a Dresser.
                                                                             Before

Image: 508 Restoration & Design

                                                                            
                                                                              After

Image: 508 Restoration & Design

Jump over to 508 Restoration & Design for the details.


4. Stencilled Dresser

                            Before                                                                                        After

Image: 508 Restoration & Design

Image: 508 Restoration & Design

This is also from 508 Restoration & Design


5. Chalkboard Dresser

Image: homelife

Jump over to Home Life for this and lots of other ideas using chalkboard paint.


6. Nursery Dresser
                                                                           Before

Image: Domestic Adventure

                                                                          
                                                                            After

Image: Domestic Adventure

Head over to Domestic Adventure for the details.

There are plenty of ideas to choose from but if none of them suit you can always try the traditional route and tackle a full on restoration. There's some great tips on TLC home about how to restore wood furniture.

Wood Crate Project

I've spent the last couple of days painting shelves in my house. Why am I writing about this?
Well, I'll tell you.

Nearly every single one of the shelves or bookcases in my house have been made from reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobes, chopped up tables or any bit of straight edged wood I could get my hands on. I haven't taken any pictures of the shelves to post up here, well, because...life's too short to be posting pictures of my shelves made from reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobes, chopped up tables or any bit of straight edged wood I could get my hands on.

But the fact of the matter is clear. We all need shelves.
(or am I on some kind of crusade to lift everything in the World at least 2 feet off the ground?) 

For some, a plain old plank of wood with a couple of brackets and you're done.
For others it can only mean the finest quality, limited edition, Baltic birch plywood shelves, hand carved by 8th generation craftsmen of some South American village.

I like to think somewhere in between is you and me.

Unless you're first choice is to get the IKEA catalogue out and you've got a little time to think about what you want, maybe it's time to try something different.

How about some old vintage wood crates.

Image: Living Room Interior Design

Image: baileys home and garden

I've always loved the look of this and I'm not sure I have the confidence to persuade my wife to allow me to stick a bunch of old wine crates on our wall...saying that... I have one issue if anyone is willing to try to achieve this 'look'.

And it's a pretty major issue.

These are the sort of wood crates you get in Ireland!

Image: William Murphy

Not exactly the same thing is it?

You could go shopping on eBay for Old Wine Crates but apart from the glaringly obvious 'it's vintage that's why it's expensive' price tag I find it increasingly more annoying that anything I type into eBay and set the search for IRELAND ONLY always comes back with 0 results.

Do we not sell anything on eBay??  Do we throw everything away??
Actually that's not accurate. We don't throw everything away. We do sell stamps and Des Bishop DVDs.

So, sometimes you have to make do with what you've got.

As nice an idea as these are,

Image: poetic home

Image: DiMeo Blueberry Farms

There's always the option of outdoor storage.

Image: GAP Photos

And if sturdy enough (with added support from screws) and with the right kind of paint why not try a simple storage unit for the kids room.

Image: ohhdeedoh (click link for how-to)

Another idea is you can always hide the quality of the crates by loading them up with everything you have in your house. (an idea I'm quite partial to if you were to ask my wife)

Image: theselby

Nothing like a bit of misdirection to hide the joints and cracks in your book shelf.

Which brings me back to the paint and why I've spent the last few days painting every square inch of reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobe, chopped up table and every bit of straight edged wood that I now lovingly call our 'bookcase'.

rePly Chair Project

Dawn breaks and it's time to face a new day.

You leave the house in the early hours and then you crawl inch by mind numbingly boring inch slowly through the never-ending snake of monotonous morning traffic. In fact, one morning I moved so slowly I may have actually seen one of my nails grow.

There is one benefit to moving slower than the aging process. You get the opportunity to peruse the lines and lines of skips that have taken up residence outside the over priced "boom years properties", which have now been forced into becoming simple old family homes - mortgaged up to the rafters (and you're lucky if you have any rafters!)

In what feels like a weird, over-sized, middle class Bric'a'Brac Sale you have skips that are filled with genuine rubbish. Bad floorboards, Rusted Pipes and Broken Windows. Others are filled with genuine treasure. Ornate Doors, Unfashionable Furniture and anything else found in the house that can and will be replaced with an IKEA counterpart - a somewhat "Furniture Version" of The Stepford Wives if you like.

As The Guardian article comments
"skip-hunting, which involves lurking outside houses undergoing refurbishment in search of discarded household items, is apparently enjoying a fresh revival as a result of the recession."

But there's another class of skip.

The "We're building an extension" skip. This is the one that I'd like to discuss here.

It's when I see these skips, overflowing with large sheets of wood and building materials that I hear the inner voice crying out in me... "WHY DON'T I OWN A VAN?????" How the hell am I going to fit 5 x 12ft Sheets of Wood into the back of my Volkswagen Polo?

It pains me to see this kind of waste. There is so much that can be made and built from the wasted material I see crammed into these over flowing skips.

Sometimes all you need is a few pieces of simple Plywood.

The rePly chair project was launched on May 4 2006. The project provides free downloadable plans to make your own recycled plywood lounge chair. How cool is that?
All the parts of the chair can be made from small pieces of scrap plywood that you can collect from anywhere.

If you Click on this Link it will bring you to a downloadable pdf that shows you how to do everything. It's as simple as that.

Here's a few examples of chairs made by people who did just that.

Perfect for the Back Garden when we have that once yearly BBQ (standing under umbrellas of course because who can organise a BBQ in advance and hope to have sunshine on the day?)







Or how about for relaxing in? Sitting and sipping some wine on your over priced balcony late into the evening, dreaming of the treasures still to find amongst the rows and rows of skips.