shoe shine

shoes! buying them is a pleasure but housing them gives me a headache. i've toyed with the idea of a pax shoe cabinet but i hate its inelegance. flimsy trones also does not cut it for me. but here's an idea from avid hacker, pk shiu, which may just fit like a sock.

"we bought two ikea magiker short shelves with doors for our entry hall. the original idea was to use those cabinets as secondary storage, while giving us a display space for the entry hall. once we put them up we realized that they are perfect for shoes. the only trouble is that we could use double the shelves. today i found a new shoes rack that is not in their catalog called fran. they fit perfectly in the cabinet, but you need to take one of the doors off temporarily to put them inside." read more here.

related hacks:
> a winning enetri display cabinet
> david's mix and match console

vika wonderful

they say you can tell a lot from a person's workstation. from this you can divine that matt jalbert's a classy, musician/designer type, no nonsence bloke willing to blow big bucks on music and gadgets. okay, so that's a no-brainer.

pseudo divinations aside, this is how matt hacked it, "i like the same legs paired with ikea's vika lauri table top at 46" x 30". the legs attach with one allen bolt; everything is stock ikea. plenty solid, and a perfect match for apple computer's aluminium product designs." read more here. check out his music too.

here's another study table top hack with versatile vika legs.

endearing enetri

when pinky sent me her hack for the enetri unit, i was so distracted by all the cool stuff (the cameras, the tray!) on her display as well as the chic coffee table. while the enetri never caught my eye, it made me do a double take in here. it never looked so good.


pinky writes, "just saw your amazing website and thought i would send my own ikea project. when I moved to an apartment with much higher ceilings all of my stuff seemed ill-proportioned (plus that enetri shelving is rickety and generally irritating!). this is a media center of sorts courtesy of my (i think) discontinued console with the legs removed and the enetri unit screwed to the top. i took out one of the shelves to fit the electronics and covered the remaining ones with drawer liner. i'm pretty happy with it! oh and the sofas visible are also ikea, recovered with cotton duck and ikea curtain."

related hacks:
you may also want to check out this magiker shoe cabinet hack and david's dining room console.

no blues for your greens

pk shiu sent me his plant pot hack that may just rescue your greens from drowning in the rain. it's a neat little physics trick. i do the same to clean my fish tank but never thought of putting it to use with plants. nice one, shiu.

shiu demonstrates his physics with the ikea ps fejo self watering plant pot. "because the pot is self watering, meaning there is a water reservoir in the bottom, there is no drain hole. with a few days of non stop rain, the pot of soil turned into slush. what to do? physics to the rescue. i bought four feet of aquarium pvc flexible tubing/air hose from a pet store. filling it with water first (or you can suck the water into it after insertion), i dug down into the mush/soil and inserted the tube under the top plate of the water reservoir. as long as you keep the outside end of the tube below the pot, gravity from the outside end of the tube will draw the water out."

and there you have it - anti-flood measures. read more here.

this other pot hack involves turning trash cans into planters.

more pixs on 2007 range

after my previous post on ikea's new range, holly of decor8 tipped me on more pixs of the ikea newbies. and what a droolfest it turns out to be. ikea seems to be getting it right this season, after what i personally thought was a rather lacklustre 2006. read more here.

commitment-phobic me loves this modular tylosand sofa. and the hot, hot colour!

more to hack in 2007

caught a sneak peek of ikea's 2007 range in design*sponge. lovely lovely. and that means we hackers can look forward to more hacking options.

frosting my billy cabinet doors was one of the things i've always had in mind to hack. well, guess ikea beat me to that. i can't wait. read more here.

one for the music

when i saw this in audioasylum's forum, it reminded me so much of my dad. and the many afternoons i spent helping him saw and drill to make his audio cabinets. now, it's as easy as driving to ikea.

"just buy an ikea lack side table and screw in some spikes where the legs would have otherwise gone (you can use spike cups if you are concerned about your floor). the table's dimension is just shy of 22x22. these tables are wood veneer over fiberboard and particle board, which sandwich a fiber lattice honeycomb core. as such, the design is that of a rigid, low mass, rapid energy dissipation support & isolation platform. this is a cheap but outstanding tweak. place your favorite cones between your cdp and platform."

sounds good to me. read more here.

other audio visual cabinet hacks:
> a hip mobile music console
> fixing the gaje speaker stand