Hacking IKEA Furniture / 宜家家具改造指南

When something you want is not available for purchase, well, you can always build it yourself! I recently moved and have a dedicated office room now. I wanted something which combines the practicality of a workbench with the look of regular living room furniture. 当你想买的东西买不到时，好吧，你总是可以自己动手做一个！我最近搬了家，现在有了一个专门的办公室。我想要一种既具备工作台实用性，又兼具普通客厅家具外观的家具。

The Result: When researching products, I found that workbenches or industrial shelving units have too much of a garage look and would never get girlfriend approval. Regular cabinets were only available with a maximum depth of 40 cm, which is a bit too small for my taste. I also looked into custom-made furniture, which landed slightly outside my budget at roughly 1 000 € per unit (I want two units). 成果：在调研产品时，我发现工作台或工业货架看起来太像车库里的东西，绝对无法通过“女友审美”这一关。普通的储物柜最大深度只有 40 厘米，对我来说太小了。我也考虑过定制家具，但价格大约每件 1000 欧元（我需要两件），超出了我的预算。

ChatGPT suggested looking at kitchen cabinets, which do have suitable dimensions (typically 60 cm deep) and a better price point (maybe on the order of 300 € per unit), but I could not find something with a decent design, a functional layout, and nice-looking sides (as the cabinets are usually intended to be installed in a kitchen where the side walls are not visible). ChatGPT 建议我看看厨房橱柜，它们的尺寸确实合适（通常 60 厘米深），价格也更亲民（大约每件 300 欧元）。但我找不到设计美观、布局合理且侧面好看的产品（因为橱柜通常是为厨房设计的，侧面往往会被遮挡）。

Lacking any readily available solution, I decided to build it myself based on IKEA Kallax shelving units. Inspiration came from the fact that I had used a very similar setup in my previous apartment, although it was just an untreated piece of MDF placed on a Kallax (and crucially not secured in any way), so I knew that the basic construction would work. 由于没有现成的解决方案，我决定基于宜家的 Kallax 置物架自己动手改造。灵感来源于我之前在公寓里用过类似的配置，虽然当时只是把一块未经处理的中密度纤维板（MDF）放在 Kallax 上（而且关键是没有任何固定），但我知道这种基本结构是可行的。

Additionally, I had recently upgraded my desk, and the old desk did not sell on eBay and was still sitting in my basement. The desktop board was still in good shape and would become the top of my new creation. 此外，我最近升级了书桌，旧桌子在 eBay 上没卖掉，一直闲置在地下室。桌面板状况良好，正好可以作为我新作品的台面。

After my recent move, I was really impressed with IKEA. They have really good options in the low and medium price ranges, their products are generally immediately available for pickup, and they have a very functional website with, e.g., accurate filtering by dimension and even integration with Apple AR. These are all areas in which I felt other furniture stores were way behind. 搬家后，宜家给我留下了深刻印象。他们在低中端价位提供了非常好的选择，产品通常可以立即提货，而且他们的网站功能非常强大，例如可以按尺寸精确筛选，甚至集成了 Apple AR 功能。在这些方面，我觉得其他家具店都远远落后。

And IKEA has some incredibly inexpensive options, which is great if you want to do any modifications, because if you make any mistakes, it is not the end of the world. The basic 2x2 Kallax is only 40 € in black, and if you take it in white, it is even cheaper at 30 €. One thing I noticed is that they made the felt pads hexagonal instead of round. I assume this is because hexagons perfectly tile the plane, allowing them to save material and reduce waste. 宜家还有一些极其便宜的选择，如果你想进行改造，这非常棒，因为即使犯了错也不会造成太大损失。基础款 2x2 的 Kallax 黑色版仅需 40 欧元，白色版更便宜，只要 30 欧元。我注意到他们把毛毡垫做成了六边形而不是圆形。我猜这是因为六边形可以完美平铺平面，从而节省材料并减少浪费。

The Build Process: For materials, I got two Kallax 2x2 shelving units plus inserts with drawers and doors from IKEA, MDF boards cut to size and screws from the hardware store, and decorative foil and rubber mats from Amazon. As I mentioned above, my old desk was also still in the basement, so I wanted to use the desktop as a work surface for the workbenches. 制作过程：材料方面，我从宜家买了两个 Kallax 2x2 置物架以及带抽屉和门的插件，从五金店买了切割好的 MDF 板和螺丝，从亚马逊买了装饰贴膜和橡胶垫。如前所述，我的旧书桌还在地下室，所以我打算把桌面用作工作台的台面。

The desk was 160 cm × 80 cm, so my dad helped me cut a 60 cm section from each end, resulting in two good pieces of 80 cm × 60 cm and a scrap piece from the middle. The cut edges will be placed against the wall, so they will not be visible. 这张桌子是 160 厘米 × 80 厘米的，所以我爸爸帮我从两端各切下 60 厘米，得到了两块 80 厘米 × 60 厘米的板材，中间剩下一块废料。切割边缘会靠墙放置，所以看不见。

First, we used my dad’s mini circular saw, which did not work that well, so we finished the first cut by hand with a Japanese saw, which took about 30 minutes. Exhausted, my dad searched for and found a new (apparently sharper) blade for the mini circular saw, which worked a lot better, and the second cut took only a couple of minutes. Power tools are really a game-changer. 起初，我们用了我爸爸的迷你圆锯，效果不太好，所以第一刀我们是用日本手锯手工完成的，花了大约 30 分钟。筋疲力尽后，我爸爸找来了一片新的（显然更锋利的）迷你圆锯锯片，效果好多了，第二次切割只用了几分钟。电动工具确实是改变游戏规则的神器。

I made some drilling tests on my old unit, which will be replaced with what we are making now. One thing to keep in mind is that IKEA panels are generally not solid, so if you want to drill into them, you cannot put as much load on any screws as with, say, a piece of plywood. Indeed, if tightened too much, a screw can break through one side of the panel. Testing this beforehand allowed me to get it right on the final build. 我在旧的置物架上做了一些钻孔测试，那个旧架子很快就会被我们现在做的这个取代。需要记住的是，宜家的板材通常不是实心的，所以如果你想在上面钻孔，螺丝所能承受的负荷不如胶合板。事实上，如果拧得太紧，螺丝可能会穿透板材的一侧。提前进行测试让我能在最终组装时做到万无一失。

Next, I put some self-adhesive decorative (furniture) foil on the edges of the MDF boards and measured, pre-drilled, and countersunk all the holes. I used a paper template to quickly mark every location and always drilled through two matching pieces so the holes would align perfectly. For the top part, I also used the corresponding MDF piece to transfer the holes into the tabletop and pre-drill there as well. 接下来，我在 MDF 板的边缘贴上自粘装饰（家具）膜，并测量、预钻孔并对所有孔位进行了沉头处理。我用纸质模板快速标记了每个位置，并总是将两块匹配的板材叠在一起钻孔，以确保孔位完美对齐。对于顶部，我也用相应的 MDF 板将孔位转移到桌面上并进行预钻孔。

I also got some 3 mm rubber sheets, which I cut to size using the MDF boards as templates (basically, the more templates you can use and the less you have to measure, the better — foreshadowing). I did not pre-drill the rubber sheets. The idea is for the rubber sheets to absorb any vibrations, as I plan to place my 3D printer and pen plotter on top. 我还买了一些 3 毫米厚的橡胶板，用 MDF 板作为模板将其切割成合适的大小（基本上，能用的模板越多，需要测量的就越少，这算是一个伏笔）。我没有给橡胶板预钻孔。这样做的目的是让橡胶板吸收振动，因为我打算把 3D 打印机和绘图仪放在上面。

One annoying thing was that I got the screws from the loose hardware section instead of buying boxes, and some of them required differently sized bits, although the screws were otherwise identical. 一件烦人的事是，我从散装五金区买的螺丝，而不是买盒装的，结果有些螺丝需要不同尺寸的批头，尽管螺丝本身看起来是一样的。

Final assembly then happened upside down. I placed the desktop board, one rubber sheet, one MDF board, another rubber sheet, and then the Kallax shelving unit. After I screwed these layers together, I screwed another MDF board directly to the bottom of the Kallax. After all the pre-drilling, the assembly went very quickly and smoothly and was the most fun part of the build. 最终组装是倒着进行的。我依次放置了桌面板、一层橡胶垫、一块 MDF 板、另一层橡胶垫，然后是 Kallax 置物架。将这些层拧在一起后，我又将另一块 MDF 板直接拧在 Kallax 的底部。经过之前的预钻孔，组装过程非常迅速且顺利，这是整个制作过程中最有趣的部分。

Previously, I used a loose MDF board on top of the old Kallax unit, but actually screwing the tabletop to the base makes a giant difference in how stable everything feels. 以前，我只是把一块 MDF 板松散地放在旧 Kallax 上，但实际上将桌面拧在底座上，会让整体的稳定性产生巨大的差异。

One compromise is that while the desktop is 60 cm deep, the Kallax unit is still only 39 cm deep, so some storage space is lost. On the other hand, I placed the Kallax closer to the front edge of the desktop, so anything in the open shelves can sort of overhang a bit at the back. I also had these two MDF boards, which I had already used as shelves in the previous unit. My original plan was to install more shelves in the new units, so I ordered more MDF boards with the same dimensions from the hardware store, but… 一个妥协之处在于，虽然桌面有 60 厘米深，但 Kallax 置物架只有 39 厘米深，所以损失了一些存储空间。另一方面，我把 Kallax 放在靠近桌面边缘的位置，这样开放式搁架里的东西在后面可以稍微悬空一点。我还有两块 MDF 板，之前在旧架子里用作隔板。我最初的计划是在新架子里安装更多的隔板，所以我从五金店订购了更多相同尺寸的 MDF 板，但是……