On ikea-hacking a workstation

Yes, I have decided that's a verb.

Fascinatingly, both German and French Wikipedia actually have articles on IKEA-hacks, while the English ones do not. French Wikipedia even explicitely states that it's a neologism.

Ikea hacks involve creating new items out of Ikea furniture. I do not fully condone buying vast amounts of Ikea's furniture - here's quite a comprehensive analysis of Ikea's sustainability - however I do fully condone reusing and passing on furniture as far as somehow possible. And then, if the furniture starts falling apart, reusing the remaining material.

So as we recently moved and no longer needed our overhead storage units from the old kitchen, I decided to create the furniture we did need - a work station with storage capacities - from these old cupboards. This does not follow any instructions, only trying out and screwing together.

Sadly I don't have any pictures of the cupboars in their original position... but I will try to link all individual components as closely as I can find them. I used:

• two 60x80cm hanging cupboards, like these
• one 40x80cm hanging cupboard, like this
• one beech-board measuring 40x120cm, like this
• eight 10cm high furniture feet, like this
• two large and one small brass handle which I have had for 9 years and bought from a store that was shutting down... I really don`t know where to find these, however hardware stores should have similar things
• about 8 self-cutting wood screws

Basically the steps are

1. assemble cupboards
2. attach feet to the bottoms of the two 60x80 cupboards
3. screw these to each other with two screws
4. attach 40x80 cupboard to the top with two screws
5. screw on beech board (screwing up from within the cupboard, to avoid the screw showing on the top) using 4 screws
6. attach handles
7. you're done

We set it up to use it for printer, scanner and shredder, to be able to place a laptop on the surface and access the devices immediately. The top cupboard contains stationary, printer paper, etc, while the lower cupboards serve as archive. I am quite happy with the final result and once we grow tired of it we can simply take it apart again. The holes are small enough to close up with wood-filler, the feet are set such that we can use the bottom cupboards as individual cupboards... I think there's so much more potential in these items that I intend to give them a long and fulfilling life as part of our furniture.