Hacked Hol

Eleanor shows her spiffy apartment. Love the clean lines, but wait, what's that mess of wires? No worries. A hacked Hol to the rescue.

She says, "I have a small loft which serves as kitchen, lounge, dining room and study. I carefully planned the space and I use my iMac as a TV/DVD player, the bit that let the whole space down was my printer sitting in a mess of wires.

the mess

Most of the charging stations on Ikeahacker were too small to hide my big fat printer, so I thought I'd need a larger storage area. Bearing in mind all the concerns voiced about ventilation on charging stations I thought the Hol box/table would alow plenty of air flow. In order to access the printer and because of the slope of the roof, a top opening wasn't practical, so I hacked it:

- I sawed the feet off one of the long edge pieces.

- I sawed holes in the other long piece to allow plugs to feed through one end and wires out the other.

- The base board needed to be trimmed so that it sits flush with the side pieces

- A piece of wood on the bottom of the board to act as reinforcement and receive the hinges.

- L brackets fix the base to the sides hinges allow the front to drop down (I was going to add sliding supports to the side, but the door drops flat to the floor so it didn't seem necessary).



- Magnetic closures at the top keep the door closed.

- The top sits in place without additional fixing (I wanted to allow as much access as possible), but you could always fix it with extra L brackets.

- Electrical ties hold in place:
1. A surge protected gang for the computer equipment
2. An individually switched gang for chargers so that I can leave them plugged in without wasting electricity
3. USB hub
4. WiFi modem

There's room for the printer and my two external hard drives. The square Hol would be a smaller alternative for smaller printers.