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drops Collage Frame - IKEA

You Will Love The Drops Frame From IKEA

How to get family snapshots out of Cyberland and into your living room.

drops Collage Frame - IKEA

 

CHEAP & AWESOME | Although they did not confirm this number themselves, Buzzfeed reported last year that humans take 380 billion photos a year. To that figure I would like to add my own unsubstantiated statistic: 99.99 percent of these photographs will forever reside out of view, most of them in Cyberland.

And maybe that’s a good thing, but displaying some printed photos in your home does keep good times and good people visually at hand without logging into a computer or staring at a digital flip screen. My new favourite way to display snapshots on paper is in an inexpensive Drops collage frame from IKEA. Read more

Tips To Make Tiny Bathrooms Feel Larger

Tips and tricks to make even the tiniest bathroom feel much larger.

IKEA Kitchen Uppers In the Bathroom - C. Rule

 

GAINING SPACE | How do you make a dinky five-foot-square powder room feel larger? Mirror is one obvious solution, which is why I installed a giant, counter-to-ceiling sheet of it in my recently renovated loo. Another is to replace a traditional, space-hogging vanity with shallow cabinets. I gained a valuable nine inches on the floor across the width of my tiny room by replacing the boxy 21-inch-deep vanity with five linear feet of plain-Jane IKEA kitchen wall cabinets that are a mere 12 inches deep. Not only did I maximize the amount of open floor area, but I gained infinitely more—and more useful—storage as well. Read more

Ikea Nutid Counter-Depth Refrigerator

IKEA’s Nutid Fridge Wins The Cold War

Two stylish counter-depth refrigerators are practically identical, but one {IKEA’s Nutid S23} is $1,000 cheaper.

Ikea Nutid Counter-Depth RefrigeratorSPEND SMART | Whenever you see a drop dead gorgeous kitchen in a decorating magazine, there is a 99.9 percent chance it will feature a counter-depth refrigerator. “CD” fridges, as they are referred to, are the coveted look, even if they don’t always pack the cubic capacity punch of traditional freestanding models, which can extend eight inches beyond the depth of standard kitchen cabinets. Read more

Hack Jobs

The real beauty of IKEA products is that they aren’t precious, which makes them ripe for reinvention.

Ikea Hacking 017

 

MAKEOVER  MATERIAL I used to think there would come a time when I would live an IKEA-free lifestyle, when every room in my house would contain only  “Grownup Furniture” —you know, just antique or artisan made pieces mixed in with factory efforts from glamorous Italian manufacturers. And I do have a few of these items in my life. But I also continue to have some IKEA because, let’s face it, the pieces are well enough made and their design is considered, sometimes even by the boldface names (in downmarket mode) whose work I see in fancy furniture shops. Read more

IKEA Praktfull Pro range

One Hot Cooker

The inexpensive Praktfull commercial-style range does everything the high-end ones do.

BEST BUY | Terri Brandmueller is a fierce recreational cook who entertains with complete confidence. Never one to shy away from a complex dish or a complicated technique, she once hauled home an entire suckling pig to roast in her scrappy old oven just because it was one of the cooking items on her bucket list. For most of her life, she has managed to “be a good cook on some pretty marginal stoves,” she says, “but I’ve aspired to having a nice one.”

Brandmueller got the chance to install a dream range last fall when she renovated her Vancouver kitchen, but she suffered sticker shock when she saw the prices. The freestanding Wolf 36-inch duel fuel range was nudging $12,000; Kenmore’s version was $6,000. Even her least favourite range, a G.E. Profile, was around $2,500 at The Home Depot. Read more

Something In The Air

Paraffin candles emit pollution, but there are reasonable alternatives.

Beeswax tealightsEvery year on the last Saturday in March, people around the world observe Earth Hour by turning off unnecessary lights and appliances for an hour. The World Wildlife Fund, which founded Earth Hour in 2007, was hoping for a billion participants in 2010. Many of them probably lit candles—which, proving no good deed goes unpunished, can also create pollution. Read more