Baby Cam/ Web Cam

Hagan's room is now available live! 

HaganCam

UK viewers may have some luck watching him play in his crib around 6am our time, 11am GMT. Otherwise he'll usually be napping at 1pm (6pm GMT)

Shoe shelving display via an Ikea hack

So the wife wanted some more shoe storage for *ahem* not her shoes, but mine! Unsatisfied with most of the storage solutions out there I came up with a plan to kill two birds with one stone. Building shelves which would take up a minimum of space and also cover up our unused ugly hallway door which has about 11 layers of paint on it (but probably a beautiful wooden door underneath!)

As luck would have it, IKEA were having a special on Ekby Laiva shelves for $1.99 each:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30178704
(they might still be if you're lucky!)

After some measuring, designing and number crunching we came up with a plan to cut the shelves in half lengthways, leaving a nice narrow shelf for a single pair of shoes, using the other half as an anchor for the shelves so that no brackets are needed. As you can see each piece mounted to the door also helps prevent the shelf below it from pivoting upwards;

The whole project took me around four hours, but I'm pretty pleased with the results and can happily report that the raw materials cost a mere $30!

Oh yes, and I also had to repair the door jamb first to re-hang the door;

There was a lot of sawing but luckily I have a circular saw :)

Here I am, part way through. Drilling pilot holes so as not to split the particle board (or MDF as we like to say in the UK). On the right hand side you can see the wood glue ready for the next shelf. My first couple at the bottom were a little wibbly so I used a more generous amount for the rest.

And here we have the finished product !

Custom Headboard with storage (IKEA hack)

Here's my IKEA hack for building your own head board with plenty of storage space within. We've been looking around for a solution which would fit into our bay windows and after our experience with IKEA bathroom hacks I came up with this plan after discovering that a custom job would cost more than a grand!

Shopping List

• MOSJO TV Unit - 39.99
• BESTA Shelf unit/height extension - 70.00
• VIKA AMON Table Top - 39.99
• LACK Wall shelf - 29.99

Project Total - $180

The basic idea was to take two TV stands which are the same depth and rotate them 90° so that they become storage boxes. Then custom cut a table top to fit on top of them, within the bay windows.

After assembling the BESTA frame I felt that the edge should be thicker to attach the LACK shelf. Since we weren't going to use the two shelves that came with the TV stand anyway, I cut them down to about 3" deep and screwed them to the inside, level with the edge (arrowed) to provide more support.

Attaching the LACK frame was then straight forward;

Here are the TV stands, in position (plant to be moved later!)

I've always wondered what the 'paper filled' IKEA wood looks like and now I know! About an inch of chipboard with an inner core of corrugated cardboard. For our purposes this is just fine because these edges are never seen (they face the wall) and this constructions helps the wood stay lighter for lifting on and off.

Two angled cuts to the table top and voila, here is the assembled piece with the top in place and the shelf attached to provide something to lean against...

and here's Hagan presenting the big picture the next day ;)

Happy Hacking!