Category Archives: IKEA

Come here for all the things IKEA that outfit House.0

We love the value IKEA brings, and this section features all the IKEA hacks and tricks we use to make things work the way they should. We have everything from Besta Cabinets with Framsta Panels, IKEA kitchen cabinets to Vika Desks and Aspvik Cabinets outfitted in our home’s spaces. House.0 is a blog featuring all the trials and tribulations my wife and I tackle as we try to turn a quirky home into a modern dwelling. Come check us out. We won’t bite (and neither will our cat).

Greening Besta

Posted on April 12, 2012 by CP

For quite some time we’ve been tossing around the idea of doing something to make our living room less black and white. We knew we wanted green, since it’s our favorite color and bridges nicely to the backyard. The obvious thing would be to add a pillow or two. Which we did, ordering a needlepoint Jonathan Adler one, but our cat Eva decided she’d sharpen her claws in it. D’oh! Adding a plant would also be a nice touch, but we’re having trouble finding just the right one.

Then it occurred to us, what if we made the top row of our Besta entertainment center cabinets, which are a glossy black, green!

Continue reading →

You got the besta me: IKEA Besta Cabinet installation

Posted on May 30, 2011 by CP

I ordered a new HDTV recently (see HD 2.0) and since its so sleek and shiny I didn’t just want to sit it on a stand.

I always loved the look of wall mounted TV’s, maybe it was time go there. The wiring however, especially after new insulation, might have presented a few challenges though. Christy also was nervous about drilling any big holes in the wall that might be necessary for a wall-mount to work. There must be another way.

In our many trips to IKEA we often took note of their cool media cabinet configurations. We then thought that maybe the best solution is to get a new cabinet system with wall paneling – then just mount the new television to that. That’d be a lot easier than drilling holes, routing electrical wires, and attaching a recessed box for a wall-mount, right?

FALSE.

Actually, this project was probably one of the biggest things we’ve underestimated. We should have been tipped off when a random IKEA customer commented on our car-loads full of IKEA boxes with, “It took me two weeks to assemble some of their closets. Good luck!”

A prophet he was, as what we thought would be a weekend project turned into about 3-4 weeks of daily tweaks and finagling.

We should have first realized this when just figuring out what to buy (what would fit in the room) required a Google Sketchup of the place. *OK, maybe it didn’t require a Google Sketchup but it sure did help visualize our thoughts.

Continue reading →

In need of some shade : IKEA Enje & Tupplar Roller Blinds installation

Posted on January 4, 2011 by CP

Christy and I have been living under standard fare, previous-owner furnished shades throughout the house.

The most exotic of which, has to be the camo pattern…

Also are some bamboo shades, adorning the east / west side facing rooms, that aren’t too bad, but nothing we’d pick out ourselves.

Another to-do of ours was to one day replace these with black-out shades for a few reasons…

Continue reading →

Office Space (Remodeling our home office)

Posted on January 1, 2011 by CP

Ahh, the office.

When Christy and I relocated to the Austin area (from frigid Rochester, MN), we technically became remote employees – with our teams still centralized in Minnesota.

During the transition we both worked a lot from our offices on the Austin campus, but after about year of getting settled in we started to realize driving to the office wasn’t necessary. Neither of us had coworkers in our buildings, we worked exclusively on laptops, and we gradually started working more and more from our home until eventually it became the norm.

There were quite a few deficiencies at home though, and we decided to address them by making a more formal and functional office space for the both of us.

When we first moved in, we just had a single small desk that we tried to fit all our equipment and things onto…

Continue reading →

Stu-Stu-Studio (making our upstairs apartment into a livable studio space)

Posted on December 27, 2007 by CP

Well, we got the remodeling bug and our determined to turn that beat-up apartment into a nice, livable space.

We’re expecting some friends to stay with us for a few months starting in January, so that gives us the extra push to get things up to CP-grade there.

Our plan…

1. Tear down the rickety cabinets

2. Re-paint the whole place

3. New window blinds

4. Repaint the kitchen cabinets (white is so 80′s)

5. Add some furnishings, so it’s ready for guests.

And so here starts our first big project. First thing was to move out a lot of the stuff we were storing up there.

Continue reading →