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Hacking IKEA Furniture

greenlightning.eu

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Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#261
post #200
post #141

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IKEA does stuff not out of MDF and cardboard?

yes, the lingonberry drink they serve in the cafeteria. :) actually they had some metal garage shelves that I thought would be ok. They turned out to be SUPER flimsy and wobbly. I think they optimize for shipping weight, which means 'solid' suffers.

Right, metal I know of, I just assumed they switched over to cheap materials in place of weed, so good to know.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#263

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I don’t understand this at all. Everybody has my phone and my AirPods, or a model close to them, and that’s fine. I don’t need my AirPods to have a monogamous relationship with me.

What do you think Phone Cases are for? People love phone cases because it gives their devices a bit uniqueness. AirPods also have cases. Other than that for Obvious Reasons Phones all look similar. The shape of your phone is not self expression. However i would hazard a guess if you look into the phone on the home screen you will not find two alike.

Laptop stickers, too; I only entered circles where Macs were popular in about 2012 and it became apparent you should personalize it a bit else it gets lost in the other three dozen macbooks in the vicinity, especially at hackathons / conferences / etc.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#264

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>IKEA had done more to evolve the public taste than any other manufacturer. I have lived and worked around a fair chunk of the western world, establishing my local headquarters each time, building myself a home. Long, long ago, I gave up on IKEA for everything except cookware and meatballs. The reason? I grew rapidly tired with seeing my living room everywhere. Move across the US, get invited over for dinner with new…

IKEA is fine when you’re just starting out, but after years, you realize that it’s got a shelf life. Good furniture really is better. You can get great stuff for very reasonable prices on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace, and it’s much more solid, durable and interesting than the cookiecutter ikea stuff.

I wanted to move on from ikea furniture, but for TV furniture (tv, consoles, games, etc) there was just nothing out there besides either custom made furniture or ikea sets. I'm very happy with the latter, in the end.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#265

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Yes, the problem is durability before Ikea was counted in centuries. Sure, this or that furniture may need to refit the hinges or refill the cushions every few decades, but your local handyman/handywoman would do it for cheap and the furniture would be well for some more decades. That, and apart from the tiny unfortunate period during which everything had to be leaded or mixed with uranium, your traditional furniture…

You’re unfortunately vastly overrating the world before Ikea. I have the furniture passed down from the 70s and 80s and it’s all falling apart and made from plywood. You have to go back to the 30s and earlier before you get furniture that will stand up like that, and making that furniture new today would cost more than almost anyone could afford.

And the only 30's - 60's furniture that survives will be mostly solid cabinets; they are neither in style (if you care) anymore, but more importantly they're no longer practical, as they were built for different lifestyles and - habits. Writing desks are cute in theory but nobody sits down to write letters anymore.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#266

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I've started wood-gluing together my IKEA and other flat-pack furniture to try and increase its usable life since - as you said - it's counterproductive to dis/re-assemble most of it anyways. I've not been at it long enough to claim effectiveness, but so far nothing has started to wobble.

This is the way. Even the cheapest cardboard-filled IKEA units hold together much better when glued, and makes moving the units less stressful (no more "it's creaking / skewed when I pick it up").

Nothing like picking up a rectangular dresser to put in the truck and watch it morph into a parallelogram.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#268
post #178

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Some of it is very good, although you have to dig to find it. They use real wood in many pieces; it's not all disposable. I don't think that the good stuff is popular, though, and it certainly isn't highlighted. When a durable (often secretly classic) design slips in, it doesn't last more than a few years. The price is usually too high and it's usually too heavy (for their audience, not for me.) I've still got some r…

Funny you should mention this. Just yesterday my wife and I went to the local Ikea to pick up some bookcases. I was originally just going to buy a bunch of the Billy bookcases; we have a few and know their limitations. But then I noticed they had a much better series called the Hemnes made with actual solid wood shelves and legs so you can route power cords and clean under them. Nice. So instead of a bunch of Billy's…

I converted my cheap Billy shelves into what look like fitted shelves. They're all bolted together, screwed to the wall, filled in around the edges with wooden panels, and finished off with 2.5m decorative strips of pine at all the edges and joins. Then I painted the whole lot the same colour and filled them with books. Looks amazing, cheap as hell. Nobody guesses they're Billy shelves.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#269
I saw a great re-use of IKEA parts to build something new and spectacular when I visited an office where they desks made from table legs from IKEA, plus old wooden doors with a lot of character they found at a a home building materials salvage store, they had put a thick coat of finish on the doors and then put a sheet of glass on top of that. And the office was filled with these door-desks, each a little different yet they looked so good together. They really left an impact on me, I've been thinking about them for the last 15 years whenever someone talks about tables or desks!

In my own life right now I'm in the market for a particular kind of wooden cabinet - I need a large space with doors up top, and I don't care whether the bottom has doors or shelves. I can only find the opposite, either bookshelves with no doors, or doors top and bottom, or bottom-only doors with shelves on top. So it seems I'll have to modify something to get doors on top and shelves on the bottom.

Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture

#270

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My hypothesis is that phones are inherently personal and personalisable: it’s our photo on the lock screen and our text messages in the app. Whereas most people don’t even consider attempting to personalise their couch or their car, so the desire for personalisation is satisfied by having a wide variety of options and colours prior to purchase. And also by having styles rapidly evolve so that many “trendy” and “anti-…

Interesting. Judging by the number of "skinnable" computer and phone apps, a lot of people seem to really care about this kind of personalisation. I have never so much as changed the default background on a phone that I've owned. I think I changed the background on my first Windows computer, decades ago, but not since. I wonder how many are like me.

I'm like you.

it's a utility. i don't customize anything that doesn't relate to ergonomics and efficiency.

and some people just want to tune and tweak: look at car modding, bumper stickers, etc

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