furniture
Fix
Turn A Plank Into A Folding Table
3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you need a small table for occasional use but you don’t have the space for permanently storing it, this simple folding table, made from a single plank, packs away neatly. More »
Design
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Cutting-edge furniture design looks great, but can you design a great-looking chair that does more than just let you sit on it? Lifehacker hits the Rigg Contemporary Design Awards to find out. More »
Can Your Chairs Be Practical And Attractive?
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Cutting-edge furniture design looks great, but can you design a great-looking chair that does more than just let you sit on it? Lifehacker hits the Rigg Contemporary Design Awards to find out. More »
Fix
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Everyone knows that putting together flatpack furniture can be aggravating, but assembling the Sturt desk from Officeworks presented me with a challenge I’ve not faced before: a printed guide that wasn’t just filled with poor, tiny, diagrams and incomprehensible product abbreviations, but actually skipped several crucial steps and also put others in an order that would render the desk impossible to complete. (When I posted on Twitter that I was assembling a desk, one friend replied “hope it’s not from IKEA”, but their manuals are in fact models of clarity compared to this one.) I got the job done eventually, and I was happy with the end result, but the experience emphasised the importance of not just sorting through the parts and reading through the instructions, but also thinking about whether they make sense, and modifying or ignoring them if they don’t. Have you faced similar challenges with built-it-yourself furniture? Share (and vent) in the comments. More »
Don’t Believe The Manuals With Self-Assembly Furniture
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Everyone knows that putting together flatpack furniture can be aggravating, but assembling the Sturt desk from Officeworks presented me with a challenge I’ve not faced before: a printed guide that wasn’t just filled with poor, tiny, diagrams and incomprehensible product abbreviations, but actually skipped several crucial steps and also put others in an order that would render the desk impossible to complete. (When I posted on Twitter that I was assembling a desk, one friend replied “hope it’s not from IKEA”, but their manuals are in fact models of clarity compared to this one.) I got the job done eventually, and I was happy with the end result, but the experience emphasised the importance of not just sorting through the parts and reading through the instructions, but also thinking about whether they make sense, and modifying or ignoring them if they don’t. Have you faced similar challenges with built-it-yourself furniture? Share (and vent) in the comments. More »
Fix
1:30PM Angus Kidman | A complaint I sometimes hear about IKEA furniture is that it’s so ubiquitous that it lacks any distinctiveness, which is why hacking it has proved such a popular topic. One unusual way to make your IKEA purchase less standardised is to chop it up and reassemble it with a few motors, which is what sculptor Jeff Carter did with the ever-popular LACK table. The motor doesn’t make them it useful as a household surface (and would be fiddly to implement), but slicing a couple up could give you an interesting new twist on the lounge room coffee table.
Jeff Carter[via IKEA Hacker]
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DIY Sculpted IKEA Tables
1:30PM Angus Kidman | A complaint I sometimes hear about IKEA furniture is that it’s so ubiquitous that it lacks any distinctiveness, which is why hacking it has proved such a popular topic. One unusual way to make your IKEA purchase less standardised is to chop it up and reassemble it with a few motors, which is what sculptor Jeff Carter did with the ever-popular LACK table. The motor doesn’t make them it useful as a household surface (and would be fiddly to implement), but slicing a couple up could give you an interesting new twist on the lounge room coffee table.
Jeff Carter[via IKEA Hacker]
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Fix
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Israeli blogger Ran wanted a long, low coffee table, but couldn’t find one that matched his requirements — so he slung one together by connecting together five Lack shelves from IKEA. Ran himself admits that the construction is a tad messy, but the end result is a great table if you’re entertaining several friends, and one that’s easy to adapt to your colour scheme (though the orange option isn’t currently sold in Australia).
IKEA Hacker
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DIY Giant IKEA Coffee Table
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Israeli blogger Ran wanted a long, low coffee table, but couldn’t find one that matched his requirements — so he slung one together by connecting together five Lack shelves from IKEA. Ran himself admits that the construction is a tad messy, but the end result is a great table if you’re entertaining several friends, and one that’s easy to adapt to your colour scheme (though the orange option isn’t currently sold in Australia).
IKEA Hacker
More »
Fix
3:00PM Angus Kidman | The ever-reliable IKEA Hacker highlights a simple hack by blogger Anna that you can apply to almost any office chair: reupholstering it for a new look. One of the big advantages of working at home is that your workspace doesn’t have to follow standard corporate design guidelines, but it’s hard finding an ergonomically reliable chair that doesn’t look like it belongs in a call centre. Adding new fabric gets around that problem. As Anna explains, “To figure out what to do, I just googled ‘how to reupholster office chair’ and checked out some of the many tutorials out there.” For a head start, check out Instructables’ step-by-step guide.
Apartment Overhaul, part II [via IKEA Hacker]
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Reupholster Your Home Office Chair
3:00PM Angus Kidman | The ever-reliable IKEA Hacker highlights a simple hack by blogger Anna that you can apply to almost any office chair: reupholstering it for a new look. One of the big advantages of working at home is that your workspace doesn’t have to follow standard corporate design guidelines, but it’s hard finding an ergonomically reliable chair that doesn’t look like it belongs in a call centre. Adding new fabric gets around that problem. As Anna explains, “To figure out what to do, I just googled ‘how to reupholster office chair’ and checked out some of the many tutorials out there.” For a head start, check out Instructables’ step-by-step guide.
Apartment Overhaul, part II [via IKEA Hacker]
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Fix
11:33AM Angus Kidman | Storing multiple PCs is always a tricky challenge, but coder Janne came up with an unusual solution for his six-core Linux cluster: popping everything into an IKEA six-drawer Helmer cabinet. This admittedly might work better in Sweden than in high-temperature Australia, but it’s still a neat approach. If you’ve come up with another novel solution for storing your servers, let’s hear about it in the comments.
Helmer [via IKEA Hacker]
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Build A Linux Server Rack From IKEA Drawers
11:33AM Angus Kidman | Storing multiple PCs is always a tricky challenge, but coder Janne came up with an unusual solution for his six-core Linux cluster: popping everything into an IKEA six-drawer Helmer cabinet. This admittedly might work better in Sweden than in high-temperature Australia, but it’s still a neat approach. If you’ve come up with another novel solution for storing your servers, let’s hear about it in the comments.
Helmer [via IKEA Hacker]
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Fix
8:35AM Angus Kidman | Notebooks might be getting smaller and more common, but it still helps to have a decently-sized work area. IKEA Hacker outlines how Jonas upgraded his computer desk by using a cabinet door as a work surface, providing a large, high-gloss surface. This particular furniture hack used a Pax cabinet door, but you could go ultra-cheap by checking for discarded doors in the As-Is section.
[IKEA Hacker]
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Build A Computer Desk From An IKEA Door
8:35AM Angus Kidman | Notebooks might be getting smaller and more common, but it still helps to have a decently-sized work area. IKEA Hacker outlines how Jonas upgraded his computer desk by using a cabinet door as a work surface, providing a large, high-gloss surface. This particular furniture hack used a Pax cabinet door, but you could go ultra-cheap by checking for discarded doors in the As-Is section.
[IKEA Hacker]
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Fix
5:03PM Angus Kidman | A good set of headphones is a key requirement for your home office, but keeping them untangled and out of the way can be a nuisance. Wiretap at IKEA Hacker details how to build your own stand using some basic IKEA parts. A quick calculation suggests the parts will cost around $56 at your local branch.
A quality headphone stand for cheap[IKEA Hacker]
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Build yourself an IKEA headphone stand
5:03PM Angus Kidman | A good set of headphones is a key requirement for your home office, but keeping them untangled and out of the way can be a nuisance. Wiretap at IKEA Hacker details how to build your own stand using some basic IKEA parts. A quick calculation suggests the parts will cost around $56 at your local branch.
A quality headphone stand for cheap[IKEA Hacker]
More »
Fix
10:25AM Angus Kidman | Most of the furniture hacks we feature at Lifehacker (like this one) are designed to make your use of technology easier, but here’s a neat example of the reverse scenario: a $29 Flarke computer desk from IKEA that’s been converted into a dressing table. You could apply the same principle to any computer-specific desk (and we suspect there’s more of those lying around disused these days given the preponderance of notebook computers). [IKEA Hacker] More »
Convert your computer desk into a dressing table
10:25AM Angus Kidman | Most of the furniture hacks we feature at Lifehacker (like this one) are designed to make your use of technology easier, but here’s a neat example of the reverse scenario: a $29 Flarke computer desk from IKEA that’s been converted into a dressing table. You could apply the same principle to any computer-specific desk (and we suspect there’s more of those lying around disused these days given the preponderance of notebook computers). [IKEA Hacker] More » 