"at our ikeas in scotland, they often sell a stack of wood from various pieces of furniture for about £4-5 ($8-10) in the bargain corner. on one stack we bought for £4 we got about 20 pax wardrobe shelves, some darker wood shelves/countertop pieces, various bits of other things and a full pax wardrobe shell that we put together for a friend. from the shelves, we kitted out a few wardrobes we use as storage and put shelves in an closet where we had ripped out a water storage tank. we also put some nice looking shelves in a funny alcove formed by our stairs.
the real hack though was building a custom shelving unit for under our stairs. ours is a hundred year old house that has a quirky and oddly shaped under stair cupboard. standard shelves just wouldn't fit so the hubby designed shelves to fit on the computer and then assembled them out of the various bits of wood. we wanted shelves to make room for our recycling bin and boxes for different household chores like painting or tiling. we used cardboard fruit boxes to organize that and they work like sliding drawers that we can take out and bring to the project. In the far back, we have a wide low shelf where we store little used items. it's amazing what £4 got us!
some tips from the projects - the nice thing about these bits and pieces is that there is usually a nice finished side to the pieces. as you can see from one of the pics, we got one of the shelves turned around but it was too late in the process and not that important aestetically. the other thing we've found from the pressed board stuff is that it makes a huge mess when you cut it so be prepared. when drilling, be sure to start from the 'right' side as it will tend to splinter if you come from the back and mess up your pretty side. but otherwise, it really works similarly to regular wood and can be used for lots of things!"
