Introduction: Wooden Magazine Rack From Ikea Parts
So this is my first instructable, I sure hope everyone enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it
My girlfriend and I have been looking for a nice inexpensive magazine rack for a while now. But everything that we find is either too expensive or not to our taste. So I decided that it was time to get a hobby and hone my skills on something useful and fun.
Last year I took woodworking for fun, but living in an apartment and being a starving student I couldn't do it for too long so I stopped after my first attempt. So after this first attempt, I ended up with a lot of residual wood... No I couldn't dare to throw it away ~$80 worth of wood, so I kept it telling myself I would need it one day... Well my patience paid off! Because when a woman says I want this, there's no other answer other than "yes my love" it worked for my family and works for me so far :)
So going back to the story, she wanted a magazine rack for all our scientific American magazines, unfortunately we couldn't find a good looking one that suited our "taste" in design, even the expensive ones were pretty ugly or inefficient. So I decided to Make it.
Some of the wood I had, had come from an old Ikea bed I used for 4 years.
In this instructable I will show you the step-by-step tutorial to make this really nice magazine rack. Using those parts from your old ikea bed. If you're a woodworker then you probably have all the tools, and you might want to skim through the document. But if you're not, please do not attempt to use sharp objects without the supervision of an adult or two.
Note: I'm not a professional wood worker.. I'm not qualified/certified to do any of these things so if you try to replicate and for some reason it doesn't work, I cannot be responsible for the re-enactment of my work. As said before, this is just a hobby/test.
Enjoy!
My girlfriend and I have been looking for a nice inexpensive magazine rack for a while now. But everything that we find is either too expensive or not to our taste. So I decided that it was time to get a hobby and hone my skills on something useful and fun.
Last year I took woodworking for fun, but living in an apartment and being a starving student I couldn't do it for too long so I stopped after my first attempt. So after this first attempt, I ended up with a lot of residual wood... No I couldn't dare to throw it away ~$80 worth of wood, so I kept it telling myself I would need it one day... Well my patience paid off! Because when a woman says I want this, there's no other answer other than "yes my love" it worked for my family and works for me so far :)
So going back to the story, she wanted a magazine rack for all our scientific American magazines, unfortunately we couldn't find a good looking one that suited our "taste" in design, even the expensive ones were pretty ugly or inefficient. So I decided to Make it.
Some of the wood I had, had come from an old Ikea bed I used for 4 years.
In this instructable I will show you the step-by-step tutorial to make this really nice magazine rack. Using those parts from your old ikea bed. If you're a woodworker then you probably have all the tools, and you might want to skim through the document. But if you're not, please do not attempt to use sharp objects without the supervision of an adult or two.
Note: I'm not a professional wood worker.. I'm not qualified/certified to do any of these things so if you try to replicate and for some reason it doesn't work, I cannot be responsible for the re-enactment of my work. As said before, this is just a hobby/test.
Enjoy!
Step 1: Step 1: Gathering the Required Items
Step 1:
The tools:
The tools:
- Drill / Dremel / Electric screwdriver (any of these will work S long as the screwdriver is powerful enough)
- Swiss army knife or similar all-in-one tool
- drill bits (according to the screws you're using)
- Screwdriver heads (according to the screws you're using)
- 5 evenly & equally shaped pieces of wood (the ikea bedframes
- 12 screws
- 2 cylindrical wooden sticks
- Patience
- Planning
- more patience
Step 2: Step 2: Lets Get It Started!
Once you have all the tools and the materials,
lets get it started! Oh wait, no you shouldn't. That's what I did and well although I'm a very impulsive man and I work on projects whenever I think of them before starting them, and although its worked so far, I'm a huge planning believer.
I just put an idea to my head and it takes a second to assemble itself an my brain goes into hyper-mode.
But since I've had very little experience with wood working, I made a few bubus that I hope you can avoid.
First. The size of the magazine rack was just perfect to the wood I had from the ikea bed, therefore I didn't have to cut any wood at all. but if you're planning on getting the dimensions the dimensions are as follows:
Wood piece: 3.5''W X 26''H X 1.0''D
magazine rack: 28''W X 26''H X 3.5''D
the easy part was setting the frame, since all I did was drill the pieces together, but in order to attach the cylindrical sticks there were 2 ways to do this.
The easy (less appealing) way, and the harder (but most appealing) way. Obviously I did the hardest one, but the easiest could have been to just cut the sticks to the same length as the horizontal boards then screw them just like the boards.
My approach however required a more sophisticated approach, and also I didn't want to see so many screws on the magazine rack (increasing the weight of the rack). I decided to cut some holes in order for the sticks to fit justly and well in the vertical wood pieces.
So I cut a small piece of cylindrical wood stick and used a permanent marker to paint on one side and stamp the circle where I wanted the hole. I measured a distance of about 8'' from top and bottom (upper and lower sticks).
Make sure that when you 'stamp' the hole in to be where you want it to be, I initially made a bubu by putting one closer to the other one (not evenly spaced), After stamping, I STILL didn't notice my bubu until it was too late and I was already drilling... So I wasted a board... which is now being used for another purpose :)
And that was all I did for preparation.
lets get it started! Oh wait, no you shouldn't. That's what I did and well although I'm a very impulsive man and I work on projects whenever I think of them before starting them, and although its worked so far, I'm a huge planning believer.
I just put an idea to my head and it takes a second to assemble itself an my brain goes into hyper-mode.
But since I've had very little experience with wood working, I made a few bubus that I hope you can avoid.
First. The size of the magazine rack was just perfect to the wood I had from the ikea bed, therefore I didn't have to cut any wood at all. but if you're planning on getting the dimensions the dimensions are as follows:
Wood piece: 3.5''W X 26''H X 1.0''D
magazine rack: 28''W X 26''H X 3.5''D
the easy part was setting the frame, since all I did was drill the pieces together, but in order to attach the cylindrical sticks there were 2 ways to do this.
The easy (less appealing) way, and the harder (but most appealing) way. Obviously I did the hardest one, but the easiest could have been to just cut the sticks to the same length as the horizontal boards then screw them just like the boards.
My approach however required a more sophisticated approach, and also I didn't want to see so many screws on the magazine rack (increasing the weight of the rack). I decided to cut some holes in order for the sticks to fit justly and well in the vertical wood pieces.
So I cut a small piece of cylindrical wood stick and used a permanent marker to paint on one side and stamp the circle where I wanted the hole. I measured a distance of about 8'' from top and bottom (upper and lower sticks).
Make sure that when you 'stamp' the hole in to be where you want it to be, I initially made a bubu by putting one closer to the other one (not evenly spaced), After stamping, I STILL didn't notice my bubu until it was too late and I was already drilling... So I wasted a board... which is now being used for another purpose :)
And that was all I did for preparation.
Step 3: Step 3: Putting All Together
So once you've gotten all ready and made the holes and tried them, its time to put it all together:
To mount it, depending on the type of wall you have (mine's a pretty ugly one due to living in an apartment building) you may use long screws and some metal L shaped braces or you may create a crazy slide in approach (ikea style)
NOTE: I have not yet posted the pictures of the rack on the wall since I haven't taken pictures of it finished (I just finished painting it)
So yeah, it took me around 2 hours with bubus and silly mistakes.
I'll appreciate all your comments/suggestions/feedback... if you can, make yours and post it! I want to see more ideas! maybe I'll make it myself too!
Finally I want to thank my girlfriend for her support and help:
- Screw the boards except one of the sides, to look just like the first (main) image,
- Fit the sticks on their designated holes.
- Fit the loose side wood piece with their appropriate sticks then start screwing them together.
To mount it, depending on the type of wall you have (mine's a pretty ugly one due to living in an apartment building) you may use long screws and some metal L shaped braces or you may create a crazy slide in approach (ikea style)
NOTE: I have not yet posted the pictures of the rack on the wall since I haven't taken pictures of it finished (I just finished painting it)
So yeah, it took me around 2 hours with bubus and silly mistakes.
I'll appreciate all your comments/suggestions/feedback... if you can, make yours and post it! I want to see more ideas! maybe I'll make it myself too!
Finally I want to thank my girlfriend for her support and help:
- She held it in the wall while I took a picture,
- She cooked while I was making holes
- She was watching the food channel while I began working
- And she's helping me give it a coat or two of paint