Sunday, October 21, 2007

Hacking IKEA

There is a wonderful blog called IKEA Hacker. It is for/by people who like to customize IKEA furniture. Consider this my entry into this category of (somewhat crazy, always handy and imaginative) people.


This room was an unhappy storeroom for properties, when my theatre was dearly lacking space for dressing rooms. Moreover, we also lacked money. Fortunately, I had about a month of summer to figure out what to do about all this. There was an odd space in the basement that could house the props, if they were condensed and organized.

My assistant and I spent a couple of weeks sorting through the contents of the properties storage, and came up with enough items we could sell/give away. Amazingly enough, through a combination of eBay and Cragislist we made enough money on the unused props to buy shelving for the new storage room in the basement, AND to supplement some of the new furniture for the dressing room.

With budget still a concern, there was only place to to turn - IKEA.


We created space for 12 actors to put on makeup, as well as storage for wigs and shoes.






The counters were hacked from shelving units
Udden, combined with Vika Kaj legs. The niche was created from the Udden units as well, but the metal sides left over from the units used for counters were used as spacers, creating the correct height for wig heads.

Other products used in the said hack were:

Mirrors Kolja
Mirror Minde
Mirror Raan
Chairs Herman

Dressing rooms always need lights surrounding the mirrors, and an inexpensive solution was found in undercabinet lights Liesta
, plugged into power strips Rabalder

Unfortunately, since the hack was complete, IKEA discontinued these particular undercabinet lights, so when the bulbs burn out, we have dark spots. Other mini halogens are quite pricey, but I am considering replacing the burnouts with their current incarnation, Non lights. I believe they accept the same power connections, so it won't be much of an issue.

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