repurposing – The Interiors Addict

The cheap & effective new product to hack your IKEA favourites

Listen up, Ikea lovers! There’s a new kid in town to easily make some of your most bargain furniture look expensive.

Stylkea offers fretwork overlay panels to make luxury-inspired furniture available to everyone. The panels are purposely designed to effortlessly customise classic Ikea pieces, including Malm, Kallax and Besta (coming soon). Similar products have been available in America for some time, but we now have our own version, right here in Australia!

The idea came to Kylie Hughes a couple of years ago while working on a home renovation with her husband. “I literally spent hours trawling through design sites and interiors magazines looking for stylish and affordable furniture,” says Kylie. “Ikea has such a great Scandi-inspired range, but I wanted to make their pieces more personalised – and they are the perfect blank canvas.”

A copywriter by trade, designing the panels while juggling her day job with being a mum hasn’t been without its challenges. “There have been a lot of late nights and weekends – and the self-doubt always manages to creep in. But I knew that I wanted: to build a product-based business doing something creative and artistic, so chipping away at Stylkea has been worth it.”

She looks to other designers for inspiration (with Jonathan Adler being at the top of the inspiration list) and utilises a range of materials built to withstand both trends and practical use. “I aim to create panels that capture very classic design styles – be they Moroccan, quatrefoil or Art Deco – that will look very sleek and sophisticated for ages to come.

“The PVC panels are UV stabilised, meaning they won’t fade in the sun, and are also completely paintable. Or you can leave them naked, because they will match your white IKEA furniture perfectly. And if you want to add glamour, we have a range of metallics in our aluminium composite panels.”

The best part about the panels is that you can be completely DIY inept and still pull off the luxurious look perfectly. The measurements and guesswork have been taken care of – it is literally as easy as wiping the furniture surface clean, peeling the sticky backing off the panel, and sticking it on to produce your own luxurious statement piece.

The panels are designed in-house on the Gold Coast, and Kylie hopes to extend that to the manufacturing process in the future.

“In the long run, I would invest in my own machinery and control the whole process from start to finish. I would also love to extend the range to include more designs as well as knobs and handles that pair perfectly with the panels.

“Ultimately, I want Stylkea to be a one-stop-shop for achieving the designer look on a budget. People deserve to live in beautiful, personalised spaces, whatever their budget.”

Shop online with prices from just $9.95.

Upcycling – what is it, why it matters and how you can use it

By Helen Edwards

Upcycling is a buzz word of the moment, but do you know what it actually means? In the pure sense, upcycling means reusing a product or material over and over again – it is taken back up the supply chain of production and can be reused as something else once it is finished with, in a perpetual cycle. Things like aluminium cans and newspaper can be upcycled in this constant cycle, meaning there is no need to create or use new resources. Once finished with, the material is simply turned into something new.

Bowling alley dining table by Rubble Designs

Upcycling has also come to be seen as “repurposing” or the act of taking something and making it better than it was before. Examples include old bicycle wheels being made into amazing light fittings, light globes being turned into pretty terrariums, crates and pallets being made into furniture, ladders used as shelves and old tyres being upcycled into belts and bags. The idea with upcycling however, is to always be considering what you can do with that object once it is no longer needed, otherwise you are just prolonging its trip to landfill.

Recycled timber pendant by Giffin Design

There is really no limit to what you can upcycle yourself in this way, except your imagination! A simple way to upcycle a piece of furniture you might find on the side of the road, or at the op phop for example, is to decorate it with decoupage, chalk paint or stencils. You don’t have to be a welder or carpenter to create an upcycled piece for your home, a simple paint job can breathe new life into many things. It is rewarding and fun!

Incorporating an upcycled piece, or material, into a contemporary home, adds character, individuality and warmth. A clean contemporary interior looks fabulous with a salvaged timber floor or a rustic table handmade with recycled timbers. I have seen people building furniture from an old dance hall floor and even a basketball court! A floor that has been created from old hardwood timbers taken from an old pier or jetty, has not only already been grown and chopped down, they also contain gallons of character and look fabulous.

There are now lots of designers, woodworkers and creative small businesses using recycled and salvaged materials in their work, or selling items which have been made from waste materials. Many are small businesses and run from their own studio and website, or you can find them at local markets, or online at places like Etsy.

A sample of upcyclers I love include:

The key to having an Upcycler’s eye is to consider objects not as they are now, but what they could become. Look at things from all angles and let your imagination run wild! Consider if an old drawer could be hung on the wall as a shelf or used in an open shelf as storage units for example. And keep your eyes peeled. You never know when you might come across something you can turn into a masterpiece for your home!

–Helen Edwards is a blogger, stylist, author and wellbeing expert. Check out her blog, Recycled Interiors.