Reviving Ivar

Salvage

I took out my compost recently and found an Ikea IVAR shelf and cabinet sitting alongside the recycling containers. Depending on whether you believe the child who scrawled “WINDELN” across the front panels (I do), it was probably someone’s diaper cabinet. The hardware was a bit broken, as Ikea hardware tends to be, which is probably why it was out on the curb. But the wood was in fine shape, and there was quite a lot of it, so I took it home to reimagine it.

Hanging files

A few months ago, I bought a filing cabinet, because adult life demands keeping track of various pieces of paper (alas!), and I don’t like having piles of pieces of paper around my apartment.

Only after struggling to get it home on the UBahn did I realize that this filing cabinet however lacks an important feature: the rails inside the drawers on which the files actually hang! Perhaps it once had these, but if so, they were removed by some previous owner. Without them, it’s a nice metal box, which is better than nothing for hiding piles of paper, but not really a filing cabinet. O, woe is me, for one project always begets another!

I noticed, therefore, that Ivar’s cabinet doors were routed with a finger groove for opening them, and that this finger groove was pretty much the perfect size for a hanging file’s hanger. I cut strips with the grooves off the doors, cut about 60cm off the legs to make sets of four, and reassembled it all into a couple of hanging file frames:

This project has mostly served as a warm-up, getting me back into the workshop after some months away. As you will notice if you look closely, the final result has some major gaps at the joints. This is because, while I did measure the distance between the hangers’ hooks from center to center, I neglected to measure the total outer length of the hanger, and as a result my A4 files didn’t quiiiiite fit and I had to push all the joints outward to get them in. What I hoped would be a nice design for a strong but simple joint is thus, uh, not. Oh well. As my old boss Frank used to say, it’s “close enough for government work”, which is basically what these are for, so I’m happy.