geisle.rs


IKEA Cabinet Hack

So one of the main goals with my house was making as much of the furniture "float" as possible, to make it easier for our robot vaccuum to keep up with the never ending cascade of dog fluff.

This left me with a slight problem in the bathroom: namely, the pocket door doesn't allow me to mount the cabinet to the wall; as there are not real studs in the pocket door bay, just pressed metal pieces to support the drywall.

So I came up with a solution: I would use some of my cable railing cable to suspend the cabinet from the ceiling. I set out to build a metal box with angle iron to mount to the bottom of the cabinet. Then I would use the cable to go from the frame up through the ceiling to a metal support structure that was mounted to the top of the ceiling rafters.

I measured the Godmorgon high cabinet, to get a basic idea of necessary dimensions. And drew a quick sketch in my trusty quad-rule sketch book.

From this I developed my cut list, and did some quick math to see that I had enough material on hand to complete the project.

Next it was time to cut the pieces:

As I only had 16 @ 1/4" holes to drill in total, I just marked and center punched their locations on the pieces that were getting drilled.

Then I tack welded the frames together:

Placed them against the cabinet to make sure it would fit.

Finish welding:

Grinding and painting:

Stringing cables and swaging:

Installation: I did put two screws in the top of the cabinet into the wall to keep the cabinet from being able to swing, but all the weight is supported by the cable structure.