ikea hack

It started with a dresser I bought little over a year ago that I repainted. A move and a year later, the drawers on the dresser were finally giving up the proverbial ghost, though the cabinet was still in great shape (damn crying shame I don't have space for it, it would make GREAT shelves with some custom cut MDF)

To keep the morning rolling smoothly instead of peppered with explicatives everytime a drawer came apart, I ambled over to IKEA and purchased a GORM (as mentioned previously in terrarium 2.ohnoes)

I did some browsing on Ikea hackers for some ideas, and settled on simply cutting down the framing materials to height. Since the square footage in my apartment is pretty small, I didn't waste floor space on the dresser; it lived inside one half of one of my closets. I'd never been pleased with it living there, as there still seemed to be a lot of wasted space involved

GORM, as I hacked it

GORM, as IKEA intended it

Now the inside of my closet looks like an over glorified clothes press - back around the American Revolution, people folded their clothes in piles instead of hanging them up. Which is partly why so many old homes don't have closets - they used a wardrobe (clothes press) instead. Less monkeying with building materials and what not when building a house, I guess. I know they had WAY less clothing and accessories than we do, because keeping those clothes clean was a time consuming pain.

I have several knobs left over from other projects, so I decided to take advantage of the many pre-drilled holes in the GORM unit, giving me space to hang up anything from hand bags to my pain clothes.

Looking at it, I realized I could really use the left over scrap from the pieces I cut off, so I pulled out a few more knobs and created a hook rack for incidentals like umbrellas, my day pack, or anything else I've otherwise had to fish for in the bottom of the closet. The only thing I had to do was sink a few nails into it.

terrarium 2.0K

terrarium 2.ohnoes

Discovered a gaping hole in the bottom of my terrarium the other day. Bad, bad bad since the terrarium was a re-purposed glass vase. No idea when the chunk decided to fall out, but it did. Thus began the search for a suitable replacement and I almost bought this beautiful terrarium from IKEA -

so... when did IKEA climb on the Shabby-Chic bandwagen?

And there's more where that came from. I wouldn't have said S/C went with Scandinavian Minimalism, but there is something appealing about accenting the spartan with a little frill. The plant stand makes me think of made over Mission/Arts and Crafts, which painted white does go with the whole cottage thing more than the traditional dark, oxidized oak hallmark of the A/C movement.

Did I mention I'm ADD? Sorry. Terrarium. Found a $5 goldfish bowl at a thrift shop. Twice the real estate as the vase, so I added a little more plant life to it, and some other umm... decor. 

While at IKEA, I purchased a GORM for the reduced price of $30 (the website lied and quoted me $40). This to replace the dresser that I guess I never posted about... I gave the dresser a face lift, and then discovered that the glue holding the drawers together was failing... again, and again, and again I got tired of running to the hardware store and purchasing brackets to keep it together. I can't install a ClosetMaid so I went with the next closest thing I could think of. I chose a GORM simply because it was wood, and I would be able to cut it down to the height requirements of the closet, unlike the other metal shelving options avalible. Since GORM has all these handy pre-drilled holes for positioning shelves, I was able to put my knob and drawer pull collection to work, installing them as decorative hooks for holding purses and other accessories. If I were going all out, this puppy would be framed in bead board, whitewashed, have a pretty paper on the back, and have pretty matching bins corralling my socks, tee-shirts and the like. Hackers gotta hack. When they have the money to do it :). Baby steps.