Martin Cooper

I decided to make it because I wanted a unique lamp shade in the kitchen . And because every time I go to IKEA, I think of other things I can do with stuff than what it’s meant for. I imagined the bottle brushes would look great with light shining through them, and I think it came out great. I call it the Mikado lamp. All materials are from IKEA. But the frame is second hand so I don’t know if they still sell it. Any frame will do the trick though it might come out a little different Materials: Frame of a lampshade (mine is second hand IKEA) 56 (in this case, but it depends on the frame size) IKEA bottle brush (MEDELVAG 0,79 Euro each) 1 IKEA RYETT LED lamp 400 lm (1,00 Euro) Tools: Household ladder Hands Time: Can be done very quickly Instructions: This is easy and hard at the same time. I’ll explain. The bottle brush has a hook. Just hang it over the top ring of the lamp frame. The trick is to divide the weight of the brushes very carefully otherwise all th...

Replacing a hardwired smoke alarm is a piece of cake. If you purchase a smoke alarm from the same manufacturer, you might be able to use the same wiring.

We downsized from a Florida house to a condo. The condo was a mess. Although we didn’t know it when we bought the place, the woman who lived there had been a hoarder. We bought it sight unseen, and gutted mostly from the sheet rock out. We are old hands at renovating, flipping, buying and selling, homes, but we are now trying to retire. I knew the condo had good light, and a view of a lovely creek through the woods. It feels like we live in a tree house. But it’s a tree house without a lot of storage. Because these are modest condos, and our unit needed so much work, we wanted to keep costs low. I thought long and hard about how to fill the dining room alcove, that all the units have, on a modest budget and maximum storage. Our kids, and small grandchildren, were coming to visit, and first we placed bookcases in the alcove: What it looked like before before! placeholder alcove shelving We had wasted depth with the bookcases, the alcove is just over 12 feet long, and about 27-2...

We needed more laundry room storage. Furthermore, this ugly area by the back door entrance with incoming water pipes and ventilation fans was completely unused. It had turned into a corner that just collected stuff. First we planned to build the storage out of kitchen cabinets , but the IKEA cabinets were too high to fit under the windows and others were more expensive. So we built our own storage from the KOPPANG chest of drawers with custom measures. We could have built our own custom laundry room storage unit as well but it’s nice to have the pre-fabricated frame and drawers with perfect fit and slide. Total cost was just a little more than 2000 SEK (about €200). Also, the knobs will be replaced by something nicer. IKEA items used: KOPPANG chest of 6 drawers chest HAMMARP Worktop Other materials: Some leftover construction wood 45×70 mm & 45×45 mm Thin panel boards Pinewood shelves White paint Screws Laundry room storage hack Build the chest of drawers but with...

Waay way back in 2007 when I was younger, I was working as a carpenter fitting out a well known high street shop. We were fitting these display units that had this broken glass effect. Well, it was actually broken glass sandwiched under intact glass so customers wouldn’t cut themselves. One day there was a beautiful young shop staff lady gazing at it in awe and amazement. I asked “oh no, did you break it?” she laughed. One thing led to another and not too long later she was my wife. Anyway, I really liked the broken glass thing and thought I would use that one day. More recently, I found the LINDRANDE display box in IKEA and decided this was my time. You can see the whole broken glass lamp project in video form here . Materials required: IKEA LINDRANDE Approx 2 square meters of 100 micron window security film Window/glass cleaner Cloth Soapy water in spray bottle Small piece of scrap wood LINDRANDE decoration box | IKEA.com Tools required: Long nose pliers Squeegee...