Cat safe planter

Materials: Rationell Variera, Kardemumma, wire, plants

Description: Why only use your Rationell Variera for plastic bags in the kitchen? I hang it on my wall in the living room. Now my cats can't reach the plants in it. I also put one of my speakers it.

For the upper plant I made a sort of a rack out of wire so it don't flatten the one below.

The pots for the plants I've used are the smallest Kardemumma, they exactly fits.

~ Marinka

Plastic Bag Trash Receptacle

Materials: Rationell, hacksaw, epoxy (optional)

Description: This little hack turns a Rationell trash receptacle into an interior cabinet trash holder that can reuse plastic grocery bags.

I used a hacksaw blade to cut at the red lines. Originally, I tried a utility knife but found the plastic was too brittle and had a tendency to suddenly split.

The plastic bag handles hook onto the little "nubs" left on each side and the handles feed into the little triangles at the top.

By cutting away at the body, it allows the bag to expand to hold much more. Optionally, I laid a little epoxy along some of the plastic bends to strengthen it up a bit.

Install it inside a cabinet and start reusing all those plastic trash bags you accumulate at the grocery.

~ Jeff Yu, Naperville, IL

Shoe cupboard

Materials: Faktum, Rationell, Abstrakt

Description: Where to do go with all my shoes? We used the empty space underneath the stairs to build a shoe cupboard from kitchen elements, and added a shelf and doors on the top to make space for boots. It holds three pairs of shoes per drawer.

~ Anne Vogt, Zurich, Switzerland

RATIONELL Retrofit into an old kitchen

Materials: Rationell drawers, laser level, drill, existing kitchen cabinet doors

Description: I installed 3 drawers with standard NEXUS fronts/covers in my existing kitchen cabinets; then I decided I could use all my existing (hardwood) doors so I drilled holes to attach Rationell drawers and metal bar.

If you plan on using IKEA FRONTS (nexus)

1. Measure your cabinet width, mine was 8 mm wider than Ikea standard so I had to...

2. Attach two widener boards (4mm wide each) on each side of each rail to adjust for width. Be super-careful so that everything is level and exactly aligned. Even a few millimeters of unleveled rail offset will make drawers not slide well.

If you want to reuse your own fronts, in addition to the above:

1. For double doors, stick them together with metal clips drilled along both doors. Skip this step for single doors.

2. Take an Ikea drawer front and measure where all the holes go, replicate on doors being super careful not to drill through... be carefull and drill slowing checking until you can easily insert the either the screw or the metal bar.

That's all. We managed to get slick drawers into our old kitchen!

~ Andres Torrubia, Spain

More kitchen drawers!

Materials: Rationell Variera, Wood sticks, glue gun

Description: Since my knife drawer was such a sucess... I decided to complete my custom Ikea kitchen drawers to include a silverware and cooking utensil drawer! Just sketch on paper, ask your local home-store to cut pieces of wood to size, take them home and glue them on!

More photos on my blog post.

~ Laura Pazzaglia, Anzio, Italy

French Country Play Kitchen

Materials: STAT doors, random unknown shelves/cabinet doors, RATIONELL shelves

Description: To make this kitchen I raided the "As-is" section at our IKEA. They always have an assortment of cabinet doors and single shelves in a variety of sizes; many for $1-$5 each. It took some patience and creativity, but eventually I found some to fit the sizes I needed. I used the shelving/cabinet doors to construct a frame, and screwed a larger (12x30) STAT cabinet door onto the frame to make the backboard. The RATIONELL shelves are the countertop. I would have preferred a single piece of wood, but these were a buck each, and I cut them to size with a circular saw. FYI, all the components are melamine, so you MUST pre-drill any holes for screws.

The hooks are BYGEL, and they fit perfectly over the backboard. The oven handle is an ATTEST, also from the As-is. Actually, all the components are from as-is except the hooks, but they're only 99 cents. All in all, the kitchen cost about $50 in IKEA components. The burners are foam board and felt, and the sink is a mixing bowl. The faucet was 3 bucks at our re-use building supplies.

~ Anny, Seattle, WA

RATIONELL jewelry display

Materials: Rationell cutlery tray, white paint, velvet foil, little hooks, large bolts and nuts

Description: I removed all the removable dividers from the cutlery tray, to create larger compartments. All the dividers were thrown away, except for the knife divider.

The whole thing and the knife divider was painted white. To give the cutlery tray a more luxury look, I pasted velvet foil inside the compartments (I bought the velvet in a DIY store, it was sticky on the other side so pasting was relatively easy).

I screwed in little hooks for my earrings and necklaces, and I also inserted long bolts with nuts for my bracelets (in both cases, pre-drill first, or else you might mess up the velvet). You can't see it on this picture, but I use the gaps of the knife divider to hang necklaces in it, which spared me the hassle of adding more hooks. I made a little open box from cardboard, covered it with left-over velvet foil and pasted it in the tray so I can put in whatever jewelry that can't hang.

Two mounting hooks were fastened on the back of the tray, so I was able to mount my jewelry display on the wall. I am really happy with it; my jewelry is not stacked up in piles anymore, I can find all of them at a glance.

~ Lani, Leuven, Belgium