The Best Home Hacks

You would never guess the end product came from IKEA.

The after is a serious "wow."

This one-day project gives your walls instant character.

You don't have to spend a fortune to get a high-end look.

From junk storage to productivity haven.

This budget bedroom has some super smart ideas.

This IKEA hack has the look of custom woodwork—but costs a lot less.

First up: Turning a blah brown doormat into a cheery welcome.

Brb, bookmarking.

You'll never buy an off-the-shelf desk again.

These upgrades are fast, easy, and full of love.

The after has color and charm to spare.

There's always hope!

Make your next paint job a breeze with these expert tips.

It makes a huge difference in the look of your cook space.

The whole bedroom's stunning, but just wait until you see the floors.

These budget-friendly ideas deserve a place on your list this year.

Give your old lamp the glow up it deserves.

These types of IKEA "hacks" are the perfect combo of affordable and fast to do.

Ring in the new decade with some IKEA hacks that will take your home organization to the next level.

You'll want to steal this clever idea for your home ASAP.

Your salt shaker doesn’t have to stay strapped to the kitchen table. We’ve got 18 ways to put it to work all around your house.

Put these smart solutions to work next year to make life easier in 2020.

Get this hero out of the pantry and into your tool kit.

It's time for your mirror to feel like the fairest of them all.

These ideas will take your kitchen to the next level.

Upcycling never looked so chic.

Bring on the color!

You won't even believe it's the same kitchen.

Jeff Goldblum would go wild for these adorable little made-over nightstands.

This guest bedroom has tons of charm (and your new favorite IKEA hack).

These planters only look $$$.

The half-moon dowel is more or less having a moment.

As soon as Hope Mendes and her husband saw their Cobb, California, cabin, they knew it was the place they'd been searching for.

Galvanized stock tanks and troughs are essentially huge tubs which can be turned into or reused as any number of things. Depending on the context, they can read modern, industrial, or farmhouse. Learn all the ways you can hack them and create something spectacular and useful for your home. Bathroom Tubs: Jayme used a large round tank as a bathtub in her in warm and inviting modernist home in Philadelphia.

Here are nine useful or fun ways to use your food coloring and bring the rainbow to projects outside of the kitchen.

We’ve all experienced it at one point: fruit flies, first a few then an infestation surrounding your fruit bowl. They’re pesky little critters, but we’ve found the best way to rid your kitchen of them. Here are our quick instructions for making a fruit fly trap with just a few simple materials. Vinegar, fruit or wine (apple cider vinegar works especially well) Glass or jar Sheet of paper Tape Find a suitable glass or jar.

IKEA says: Whether for a walk-in wardrobe, hallway solution or a business, ELVARLI storage system provides open storage that’s easy to get just right, while looking nice. ELVARLI storage system is the result of some innovative development at IKEA to create flexible, beautiful and lightweight storage. ELVARLI storage system is elegantly designed with attention to small details like seamless joints and invisible fittings.

IKEA’s description: The herringbone pattern has a beautifully pleasing geometry to the eye. In BARKABODA countertop the pattern in dark brown wood adds true elegance to the kitchen. The countertop is made durable with a layer of solid wood that covers a particleboard core. This technique not only gives a genuine expression of solid wood, but is a good environmental choice as it’s resource-efficient.

We have looked into framing many an odd sized image, and more often than not a custom framing job really breaks the bank. Here is a little tutorial on “custom” framing your own images for far less than a professional framer. standard frame, larger than your image paint (if desired) custom cut mat acid-free artist’s tape acid-free paper 1. Select and paint your frame. We chose a frame in raw wood (saved a few bucks there) and opted to paint it matte green with acrylic paint.

Every well-run home is teeming with tricks and shortcuts to keep it humming along. We’re sharing our best quick tips — for cleaning, organizing and repairing stuff at home — to save you time and money. Click through for today’s helpful hint, and links to tons more… Use a WALNUT! Just rub a shelled walnut on the damaged area, and watch in amazement as the dings, scrapes and scratches all begin to darken and disappear.

While renovating our bathroom, we got an annoying amount of paint on the window. The glass is textured so even though we had prepped the window with painters tape it still leaked [we were also a bit clumsy in other places]. The textured glass meant a razor blade wasn’t very effective so we got creative!Materials:Razor BladeNail Polish RemoverMicrofiber ClothCotton TipsGlass Cleaner 1. Scrape as much paint off the glass as you can with the razor blade.2.

We just moved into a new place and even though we’re renting, we wanted to swap out the pendant above the dining table for a nice upgrade we can take with us when we go. I was going to call an electrician until a friend mentioned that I ought to be able to handle it myself. So I did, and was a lot simpler than I expected!Materials:ScrewdriverWirecutters/strippers (or if you’re handy, a pair of scissors) 1. Turn off Electricity!2.

It’s rare to find two-prong outlets in homes these days. Landlords and home owners have slowly switched over to three-prong outlets as more and more devices and appliances need them to power up. Occasionally though, you move into a place that doesn’t have a three-prong outlet where you need one, so how do you remedy the situation? You switch out your two-prong for a three-prong, but there’s a lot to consider before you start rewiring your apartment.

Fresh flowers are a fleeting pleasure no matter how you slice it, but we think they bring so much life and color to a room that they’re absolutely worth the effort and expense. A few simple tricks borrowed from the pros will help you keep flowers around a good long while. So go ahead, buy yourself a Valentine bouquet!

There are 1,000 different ways to hack furniture from IKEA — although this transformation is so extreme you won’t even recognize it. This ho-hum piece has gone Mid-Century!Inspired by Mid-Century pieces from Paul McCobb, this basic IKEA entertainment stand was given a makeover.With the addition of sliding front panels and retro-style feet stained to match, this piece is anything but basic anymore.

Is there anything more ubiquitous than the IKEA LACK series? I remember it being amongst my first purchases coming out of college, thanks to its neutral-modern design and affordable price. It’s no surprise it remains popular to this day for the same reason. Here’s an example of someone taking a me-too LACK and converting it into a me-only TV stand… I searched and searched for a TV table I could live with, and finally came across this cool Jetson-esque one at Logue Studio.

Not only does this IKEA Hacker project by Huib von Essen reuse and refresh three discontinued IKEA BOALT CD racks, but the solution even incorporates 15 clear empty CD cases as transparent shelves for displaying small items (on a related note, CD racks installed horizontally also work great as toy shelving/display) …and you know you’ve got at least a few of those empty cases laying around somewhere.

Every time I think I’ve seen the most creative hack of an IKEA product, someone comes around with something new that completely blows my mind. Normally a table turns into another kind of table, or a dresser becomes a bar, but I never thought I’d see the day someone managed to turn a series of IKEA beds into a stylish iron fence. Meike at IKEA Hackers said she had wanted to get a new iron fence, but iron fences can get really expensive.

I’ve been trying to hack an IKEA chandelier into a serviceable, modern, Sputnik-style chandelier for over a year now. Successful IKEA chandelier hack tutorials abound on the Internet, but mine has been been pretty slow going between the spray paint, origami, and the fact that I ordered completely the wrong size chandelier. But apparently a really good IKEA Sputnik is easier than I ever thought. Over at IKEA Hackers, Caissie St.

We’ve seen IKEA coffee tables customized dozens of different ways. They can be retextured, studded, and even given heavy marble tops. But this hack takes it in a different direction and turns one coffee table into an upholstered ottoman. Over at IKEA Hackers, Marynell from Amusing MJ showed how she turned an IKEA Lack coffee table into an upholstered ottoman like the ones she liked from West Elm with some 5” foam batting from JoAnn’s and some upholstery fabric.

Some IKEA hacks go so far beyond a simple IKEA transformation that they should be considered custom furniture with IKEA elements. In some of those cases (like this one!) the results are exceptional. IKEA Hackers user colsey blew my fragile little mind with this custom writing desk inspired by the Cavour desk by Carlo Mollino. It took some work, but considering that the original desk would cost $14,000, the work was well worth it.