Creative Ikea Hacks and Spins
The 2018 products from Ikea have given Ikea furniture hackers and Pinterest fans plenty of fodder for re-envisioning the Swedish manufacturer’s basics by embellishing, modifying, painting and reconfiguring Ikea furniture, pieces and parts. Take a look at these creative iterations that all start with one of the international company’s ready-to-assemble products. Then dive into an easy weekend project and put your own spin on a generic Ikea item to make it fit your signature style!
Dresser Multiplicity
The solid wood Tarva dresser comes untreated and unstained from Ikea and there are umpteen ways to reimagine it for your own bedroom, dining or bonus room. A little painter’s tape and paint, turned an ordinary Ikea dresser into a baby’s changing table for blogger Amy at Design Sponge.
One clever hacker took a saw to the drawer-fronts of the dresser to create a subtle pattern and replaced the knobs with drawer pulls. After painting just the drawers the hacker left the top and legs naturally wood-grain
ed.
For a mid-century modern spin on Ikea dressers and nightstands, hackers have painted tops and stained legs like this version on Remodelaholic’s blog. Cassity also angled the legs with a miter saw to give the piece a little more of her personality.
Stencils can turn any ordinary piece of furniture (even hand-me-downs and flea market finds) into something exotic and other-worldly. There are lots to choose from and kits make the project so much easier. Stencil kits can help you to create the look of popular inlay furniture for much less, like the Neera Bone Inlay stencil, applied with a brush from a kit available on Amazon. Real camel bone inlay dressers and tables are meticulously handcrafted and can be pretty pricey, but with inlay stencils you craft your own DIY inlay treasure!
Media Storage
Another mid-century modern transformation started with a Bjarnum media storage cabinet, also from Ikea Hackers. Blogger Jules replaced the doors with two pieces of stained Baltic birch plywood to create a more upscale-looking credenza.
Along the same lines, another contributor to Ikea Hackers took a charcoal Hemnes bedroom end table and TV console and stripped the paint from the tops and drawer faces to create a sleeker, more aesthetically pleasing matched set. He also attached a four-foot long electrical strip to the back of the unit (Home Depot, $20) to hide the rat’s nest of cords from all of his electronics.
It’s a Dog’s Life (and a Cat’s!)
Ikea came out with its Lurvig pet bed, designed to be used two different ways – as a cozy niche with sides and a pillow or flipped upside down for more of a perch. Some hackers add legs to raise it off the floor, but others use a variety of other Ikea products and retool them for their fur babies.
At IkeaHacker.net, contributor Samantha took four different Ikea products and created a cat corner. She spent about $70 on the pieces, which contains a kitty litter room on the bottom, a bed and storage space on upper shelf, and a place for food and water on the top.
Other pet-loving hackers at IkeaHacker.net used crates to make a stair-step bed for a height-challenged puppy, a dog-crate system inside a desk, and an inexpensive climber for a clumsy cat. Check out more pet beds and feeding stations from Bark Post.
Reimagine Your Life in Colliers Hill
If the idea of community and friendly, helpful neighbors appeals to you, then visit the master-planned community of Colliers Hill where residents look out for one another and make fast friends. Explore all 15 model homes from Colorado’s top home builders: Meritage Homes, Shea Homes and Richmond American Homes. Available in ranch or two-story designs and priced from the upper $300s to the $600s.
