Now this is brilliant. How many of you are living in rentals where your landlord decided to ruin a perfectly good wall with a thermostat smack dab in the middle of it? Our thermostat and door buzzer, for example, totally interrupts the art gallery we have going on on our wall. One creative Ikea shopper figured out a genius way to hide both, but still have access to them.
"For some reason the builders of our house thought the perfect place for a big ugly doorbell and the house's thermostat would be right in the middle of a big long corridor wall. In order to hide it, we bought two Molger mirrors (although we only needed one piece from the second pack)," Phil tells Ikea Hacker. "I simply mounted the mirror backwards in the frame and used the base piece from the second pack as a replacement top piece (since Ikea has it designed that you slide the mirror in from the top afterward so for our needs the top lip would have been missing).
"I bought some hefty cupboard hinges from a local hardware store and a little metal L-bracket and mounted the mirror to the wall. The hinges are more than strong enough to hold the mirror but I use the L bracket to hook the mirror on when closed so as to make sure that it is level. So now it just looks like a chunky mirror yet we can open it up to change the thermostat when we need to."
(Images: Ikea Haker)
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Comments (23)
The thermostat needs to have air circulating around it in order to work; that's how it knows what the temperature is, and when to turn the heat on and off. By the looks of it, the box doesn't have any holes in it or any way to let air in. Holes along the bottom and top would probably do the trick.
Great idea, but ditto on the first comment. At least it wasn't the smoke detector.
That's a really bad idea. Even if they put holes in the box, the temperature inside the box will not rise and fall as quickly as the air in the room, so the thermostat will not be able to respond quickly to changes in air temperature. The occupant will become chilled long before the heat kicks on, and will be roasting before it turns off. This bad for the people living there and bad for the furnace.
Agreed...
Form 1, Function 0
I concur this is the worst idea ever, logistically.
It might work if they drilled a lot of holes around the frame, but it will still be off.
Could work as a safe.... or rather, a clever place to hide things... but agreed on above comments.
too bad, as it's a much prettier solution. But obviously wont work.
We have the same thing..a hallway 'decorated' in the center with the thermostat. I'm much less bothered by it now that we updated it with a much prettier digital thermostat.
It should work fine if they remove most of the bottom and top panel. As long as the opening is large enough air will freely circulate upward, and it shouldn't be to visible from a standing or sitting position.
How well it works depends on how much air circulation that area gets. If it's fairly breezy - say, a vent blows right on it, or it's near a return air vent - it might be alright.
Bad idea, for all the reasons cited above.
There are more attractive and affordable thermostats out there that are pretty easy to install. Plus, some are even programmable, so you get green points for that.
I agree with the others, the thermostat has to be able to sense what temperature the air is. That is why the builders normally put them there. Our builder did the same but we have a small area just next to that main wall in our living area that would also work so my husband just moved the thermostat. Obviously that won't be an option for everyone though!
I like the mirror they just need to make sure the air is getting through.
Such a pretty solution.... but alas. You need to take this idea and use it in another way. Perhaps hang some small hooks inside to hide keys?
I agree re: the thermostat, but for a door buzzer this is a brilliant cover-up. My incredibly ugly old intercom is mounted in our kitchen, of all places (which happens to be about as far from the front door as you can get). I think I'll make this happen but use a cool old poster or print instead of a mirror.
I simply positioned a small shelf unit on the wall, and anything that I place on one of the shelves, like a framed picture or a piece of pottery or whatever, conceals the thermostat without interfering with its function. Plenty of air circulation. It's not that hard to hide a thermostat; they're pretty small.
My thermostat just happened to be in the perfect location to have a floor lamp in front of it.
I used a floating shelf with a picture frame on it to hide the intercom/buzzer, though. That would probably be a good solution for this, too.
On second thought, Maybe I will do this to my TV
If ventilation is added to the mirror, it will be fine. I have seen plenty of offices that have the thermostat locked behind a plastic cover to keep employees and guests from changing the settings. Those are completely enclosed except for the vents.
I have this exact problem and I have been thrashing about for a solution for years. I think the cover-up mirror works, but, as previously mentioned, it does prevent the thermostat from working correctly. I have considered this approach, but I would also need to budget for a remote thermostat system. In a remote system, the wall mounted part receives the temperature information wirelessly from a separate and portable temperature reading device that looks sort of like a digital alarm clock. The original purpose of the remote thermostat was to be able to control the temperature in a specific room, but it would work here to prevent the theromostat from getting the wrong reading because it is covered up by a mirror.
Holes at top and bottom, lots of'em. Who's going to see'em? :) WOOHOO!!!
The look is fab!
Keep us posted as to how you ultimately address the thermostat functionality. The comment about the wireless sounds interesting.
i guess i stand alone when i say i don't get the big deal over seeing a thermostat. everyone here has a thermostat! i don't particularly like the look of my toilet, but it serves a purpose and i think most people are ok with seeing it!