The MARKERAD glass door cabinet is a really nice, simple piece of modern furniture made from solid pine.
It has a really nice pop of colour on the ‘nail’ shaped orange handle for the glass sliding doors.
before
My only issue is it’s a bit low to the ground and the holes in the glass sliding doors allow dust in.
So this is a relatively low cost and simple fix that really elevates the unit, in my opinion.
after
IKEA items used:
Other materials / tools:
- White rubber money-box stoppers x 2 (eBay)
- Tapered wood legs, M8 bolts, 20cm, Mahogany Stained x 4 (similar on Amazon)
- Parlat LED strips x 3 (Amazon)
- Parlat LED strip extension cable x 1 (Amazon)
- Cable tidy clamps (Amazon)
- Nano gel tape (Amazon)
Elevating the MARKERAD cabinet
You are basically stacking two MARKERAD display cabinets, one on top of the other, adding some legs to the the bottom cabinet, and lights (optional).
Since it’s a fairly square piece of furniture with flat sides, it’s safe and easy to stack, as long as you have a reasonably level floor.
It’s an incredibly simple hack that requires no tools or special skills, other than a pair of scissors. As such, there aren’t really any specific steps other than to add the legs, add the rubber stoppers, install the lights and enjoy.
Basic build (no lighting)
Each MARKERAD comes with four small plastic feet to help level the unit. You will need to install these feet on the TOP cabinet if you intend to use lighting, to create space between the two cabinets and allow the power cable to slip in between the two cabinets and not be squashed.
If you’re not using lighting then you could probably lose the plastic feet altogether, though they may be useful for levelling the top cabinet. And I think the small spacing between the cabinets actually looks quite nice regardless of lighting.
Here’s what I did.
Buy 2 x MARKERAD cabinets. These are limited editions circa 2020 and collection only at time of writing.
Related: IKEA changes its logo for Virgil Abloh’s MARKERAD
Install the tapered wood legs to the bottom cabinet. The ones I bought via eBay came with M8 bolts, the same as the holes already installed in the cabinet, so this is a straightforward add on.
Now to stack the second cabinet on top. Make sure you’ve added the plastic feet supplied with the MARKERAD for the top cabinet, especially if you are using the lighting strips (read separate instructions below)
Get someone to help you lift the second cabinet on top of the bottom one. Once you have the two cabinets stacked and lined up, get someone to lift each side of the top cabinet while you install a sticky FIXA felt pad under each plastic foot. This should protect the bottom cabinet from scratching.
Lastly, simply push the two white rubber stoppers into the two holes of the glass doors.
Done!
Optional lighting
All three LED strips are installed OUTSIDE the cabinets using the nano tape and can be daisy-chained using extension cables.
I only used one extension cable to daisy chain two of them. Mainly because I wasn’t aware of their existence when I first stacked and filled the cabinets. So dismantling it all to add another extension cable would have been a pain.
I’m fairly sure if you did this from scratch that you could daisy chain all three LED strips and only have one mains plug to deal with – much neater.
Because the pine batons have a bit of depth to them, and the LED strips are almost the same height, you can practically hide them from view.
Use the Nano tape and cable tidy grips to install all three on the front, inner edges of the cabinets, two on the bottom cabinet, one on the top cabinet.
For the middle LED strip, make sure you use the plastic feet on the TOP cabinet to create space. Then, trail the power lead out over the back of the cabinet when you are stacking them.
What’s the cost?
Each unit costs £150. The FIXA pads are around 50p a packet. Rubber stoppers around £1 each. The stained legs were around £20 for a set of four. And the LED strips around £15 each, so a total cost of around £370.
The cabinets take the lighting really well as they are glass on all sides. And despite being quite a large object, as it’s largely glass it doesn’t feel big in my space. And I have a low ceiling.
How long did it take to hack this?
It took a while to arrive at the stacked option as I bought one cabinet first then had the idea to stack another later.
If you were doing this in one go it would take maybe 2 hours total.
Anything you would do differently?
If I do anything differently in future it would be to daisy chain all three LED strips to reduce the installation to a single power plug.
~ by Simon H
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