Hacking IKEA Furniture
58 points by greenlightning 3 hours ago | 16 comments

vanrohan 2 hours ago
IKEA furniture is great for small adjustments to fit your needs. Not costing a fortune also makes it easier to experiment with it. Since they're so common, it's easy to find CAD drawings for most of them. I did a small hack/conversion on a Billy closet to hide some pipes in our apartment. https://vanderwalt.de/blog/customizing-ikea-billy-to-hide-pi...
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artisinal 28 minutes ago
My mind immediately went: I’m sure there is some German law or ordinance or regulation against hiding your Gaszähler. This surely goes against die Niederdruckanschlussverordnung.

Now that you have published this online, police will visit you to remove the Billy!

Perhaps I am too pessimistic with German laws.

PS: It looks much better this way.

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xattt 39 minutes ago
This look lovely and probably felt extremely satisfying once everything was said and done.
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jmathai 16 minutes ago
I've been pretty disappointed with "medium quality" slightly more expensive furniture from places like west elm and pottery barn.

Now I will either get older recycled furniture for quality or pieces from IKEA for cost.

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torginus 41 minutes ago
I was thinking along the lines of Ikea-style furniture from scratch. Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements.

How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the required holes, and would tell you what size of screws and pins and dowels you need to pick up.

I definitely would use something like that, instead of trying to cut preexisting furniture to size.

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ajsnigrutin 35 minutes ago
That would be very expensive compared to ikea.

Look at the very popular Lack table, it's made from cardboard hexagons with four pieces of wood-like thing in the corners to hold the legs. You can't make that yourself for cheap, and just the material cost in eg. wood, would be more expensive than the full table in ikea.

Otherwise, there are many youtube channels specializing in woodworking where you can learn all the basics to design your own furniture, but it won't be cheap.

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pbnjay 19 minutes ago
Re: the slight wobble, you should be able to find some inexpensive thin-sheet backing board at a hardware store. Use small ribbed tacking nails or glue around the edges to attach it at the back, and it should help stabilize and prevent racking.
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ljf 43 minutes ago
I used to spend hours pouring over the https://ikeahackers.net/ site - but never actually hacked much of our furniture (no more than adjusting the height, or changing handles/worktops).

As cheap as Ikea was, being in London in my 20s just as Freecycle started, meant we ended up with a lot 'vintage' furniture for free or next to nothing - some we still have now.

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zkmon 37 minutes ago
"Hacking" when used in the context of furniture actually means breaking it with an axe.
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Waterluvian 35 minutes ago
What’s the distinction between hacking, whacking, and chopping? And how can we incorporate these terms into tech?
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iLoveOncall 12 minutes ago
I have this whole website dedicated to it bookmarked since a long time: https://ikeahackers.net/
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trongnhan 20 minutes ago
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greatgib 45 minutes ago
The low cost makes it perfect for diy as for an amateur you know that you have the safety to be able to easily buy a new unit if you screw up.

Looking into ideas, I was a little bit disappointed to not find community website of people sharing ideas, experiences and results around such hacking.

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aBioGuy 43 minutes ago
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a3w 21 minutes ago
In 2014, IKEA made headlines when its legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jules Yap, the founder of IKEA Hackers, demanding that she hand over the domain name. Good to see the site still online, after the PR department took note that legal teams were not-only filing useful claims.

Ever since then, I avoid sharing pictures of IKEA furniture. Like Mattel, suing barbie blogs of children. If I did not design it, I won't share a picture of it. Even building architects will sometimes sue if you photograph the house.

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