Everyone who’s ever furnished an apartment or home from scratch likely has a pretty serious love hate relationship with IKEA. The design is simple, sleek, and Swedish. The furniture is usually pretty easy to put together, but it doesn’t always stay in one piece if you try to move it from room to room. And, everyone else has it. You can’t really get away with a sneaky IKEA piece here or there, because your best friend’s brother’s girlfriend definitely already has it. And so began the world of the IKEA Hack. Where we all accept our dependence on IKEA, and thrive on coming up with the most creative, colorful, inventive ways of tricking out the most standard living essentials around. First up, 4 companies who’ve made it their business to provide creative tools for adding color and personality to a whole slew of IKEA items. Pretty Pegs: Described as shoes for your furniture and pictured at the beginning of this article, Prettypegs has created a line of playful and stylish customizable legs that fit just about any piece of IKEA furniture.
Whether you’re looking for something funky, modern, retro, or traditional, Prettypegs has got what you need. What colors would you choose for your living space? We love these wood-dipped pegs! Bemz: Not your average set of slipcovers, the gorgeous IKEA frocks at Bemz will reinvigorate that old Ektorp armchair, Karlstad Sofa, or Nils dining chair. You wouldn’t host a party without a touch of cover up, why should your furniture? With over 180 classic and modern designs, you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your living space. MyKea: Now that you’ve got your chairs and couches fully outfitted, what about all those shelves, cabinets, dressers, and tables? MyKea provides beautifully designed stickers or decals that affix oh-so-perfectly to your plain old IKEA pieces. They have a huge range of design styles, for nature lovers, type nerds, romantics, and modernists. If they don’t have stickers for your furniture on the site, send a furniture request! O’verlays: Stickers not gonna cut it for your IKEA revamp?
If you’re looking for more hardware, O’verlays is just what the doctor ordered. They’ve created a collection of light decorative framework panels available in several patterns and sizes perfect for your boring old drawers and cupboards. You can even buy them for non-IKEA furniture, tabletops with glass over them, windows, etc. And then, we’ve got the incredibly creative community of crafty IKEA hackers. In fact, IKEA Hackers have their own official website! Here are a few of our favorite furniture hacks from around the web. IKEA Cart Re-Make: Love this vintage-ified kitchen cart. Might need to whip up a few of these for an on-the-go Brit Kitchen! Chalkboard Bookshelf: For a little creative storage, take 3 IKEA Expedit bookshelves (we all know them too well), turn one into a chalkboard, and turn it to the side! Mandal Headboard Hack: Need a multifunctional headboard that doesn’t mess up your walls? People have been tearing it up (or, not tearing it up) with this Mandal Headboard.
We love the bookshelves, clip lamps, and art-hanging possibilities. Library Drawers: Another great example of turning your birch-veneered Ikea pieces into antique-looking awesomeness. IKEA Hack Table Vase: A mason jar IN a table? Clearly this is right up our alley. In fact, this could be a pretty sweet way to hack a few custom tables for your wedding! Two Ikea-tastic things to stay tuned for? A roundup of IKEA Lighting Hacks (swooning over the Frack Hack above) and Alexander McQueen Pretty Pegs!! Have you seen other cool Ikea hacks? Send us the link!Ikea biffed by going after IkeaHackers, the fan site that shares all kinds of new uses and smart mods for the Swedish superstore's affordable furniture—seriously, you can't buy this kind of devotion. Until founder Jules Yap sets up shop under a new name, let's have a look at a few of the projects that make her site so endlessly scrollable. There's such a range of finished works—from "Oh oh I could do that!" to "Why would you do that?!" to "Hey now that gives me an idea..."—that it's tough not to fall into a DIY-design clickhole.
Here are some of the adventures-in-how-to that stood out to us. Share your own personal faves below! There's no end to what you can to with an Expedit (RIP). This awesome hamster habitat won the Hack of the Year in 2010, and it's easy to see why: Some small modifications to the Expedit—plus a little glass—turned Ikea's beloved shelving system into a home for a furry friend. You'd never guess that this sleek, sinuous privacy screen—which turns the bathroom of an open loft into its own space—was made from $2 Rektangel vases. But yep: Hundreds of these glass thangs were tipped on their sides and repurposed. There's a reason this incredible personal library won the 2011 Hack of the Year. It's made from 60—yes, 60—Billy bookshelves, Ikea's bargain basement bookshelf. Attached to the French country home of Chas Saunter, they look undeniably classy. Here's the archetypal example of IkeaHacking brilliance. Take one stool, four nested file organizers, and boom: A transformable table with tons of storage space for under $10.
All you have to do is glue the folders together and attach them to the stool. For an added bonus, the nested folders inside the table pull out to change its profile. Things really get cool when an Ikea hacker has soldering skills: This brilliant hacker turned a plain old wood table top into a beautiful working guitar. Now this is unexpected. Tracing around an old kid's jacket will give a decent enough pattern for this cute little coat. Lined or unlined, it's pretty ingenious—though apparently it will dull the hell out of your sewing machine needle. I'm wondering whether to try to make one for myself... Here's a solution for all those space-challenged Ikea hackers out there (and aren't there so many!). This Dutch hacker took a shelf and a cabinet and mounted them to the wall, creating what might be the skinniest desk for an iMac ever built. The best part might be the fact that there aren't any errant cables hanging around: They're all stored inside the upper cabinet. Okay, this is admittedly not for everyone, but it's a smart solution!
An industrious family member made this for her grandma's home in Malacca, Malaysia, which is lacking upstairs plumbing. Adding a raised section to the top and a few privacy panels between the legs of a Stefan chair, a small bowl can easily slide in to the hole. Noted: next time she's choosing a model with arms, for extra comfort (though it would be tough to beat Homer's Lazy Man Toilet Seat for sheer sit-back-and-relax luxury). This was designed to allow or opening the drawers under a Mandal bed, but relocating two of the Frosta stool's legs looks like it would make a killer sofa table, too (as long as the height was right). There are a lot of storage beds on IkeaHackers, but there's something about the structure and staging of this one, which used nine Faktum cabinets, that makes it look particularly perfect for a small space. It's involved (with extended blog post how-to here), but if you had the tools and the time and the drive—it would be incredible to make something this functional look this good.
This is another project that's going to require some power tools, but if you're keen on sewing and have the room for a dedicated place to stitch, this is a might purdy use of an Ingo table. Additional tutorial here, if you're into it. Okay, hey—we're back to unconventional spots to pee and poo. The name here really says it all, and all it took was a long piece of MDF, a pair of Ikea PS Lockers, and a cat flap inserted into a custom cut-out in the side. Slide a litter box in the drawer and you're good to go.This effect was made pretty much exclusively out of Trofast toy storage boxes affixed to the walls and ceiling: some facing out and filled with magazines and books, some facing the other way and lit from within by LEDs. Ikea's iconic Frosta stool is a cult favorite—and here, it's turned into a beautifully abstract bookshelf that seems to climb up the wall like a vine. Rather than spring for some spendy backsplash, this cool kitchen has a series of Rationell glass panels installed flush up against the wall between counter and cabinet.