Hacking Hemnes
.... all the elements are falling into place now.
Leave it to IKEA to produce a quality product - solid wood panels. Craftsmen don't diss it, because both you and I know how expensive it is to design and build with solid wood. Leave to me produce a nice design and well crafted too. The clients opted to add a nice fabric on the back of the bookcases. I suggested to create an upholstered top moulding - to create a very rich design - the entire project has a very luxurious feel. The hardware on the desk is top quality, heavy, cast bronze.
I took extra care with the fabric on the piece - sourced at Ethan Allen - because of the tight pattern it was critical that backs and the crown moulding be carefully upholstered - the pattern had to match exactly on adjacent pieces. Look -
But as much as I liked working with the solid wood, the best part of this project is the work surface - the desk. It's got a depth of only 24" at the corners, but it has got a slight curvature of +1" in the middle. It's perfectly symmetrical [to ensure that symmetrical gentle sweep on all the work surfaces I fabricated 3 separate jigs!] and has a nice thickness, that mimics the vertical posts on the flanking bookcases. It has a very spacious feel - I wanna say it's like a deck of an aircraft carrier. It's clad in Italian ABET's super-matte laminate from their latest collection, that mimics lightly bleached wenge slab - I matched the grain [why not?]. I tell you - it's so spacious you will be able to land jets on that thing! Here -
But you know how IKEA hacking is all about re-purposing and reusing parts of the system - whatever it may be? This is it.
I made the doors for this upper unit out of the slab of the original desktop. That's right.
I first optimized the slab for largest doors that I could make out of it - the first door being right up to the grommet hole, and then I laid out the other set. Based on those dimensions I modified three AKURUM uppers to match. For the cleanest look, I extended the doors past the bottom - leaving a nice overhang to to use for opening. It is crowned with a slab finished with the matching laminate. Awesome, smart design and the horizontally matched grain on the slab looks amazing.