Hacking IKEA cabinets? I've heard of hacking computer code, cell phones, credit cards - even espionage hacking computer controllers on military equipment.

But hacking IKEA?

Turns out consumers are doing it - buying plain IKEA cabinets and shelves in their flat pack boxes, then assembling them and dolling them up as built-in finished cabinetry, storage cupboards and closets, adding crown mouldings, mirrored doors of their own devising, wrapping them in fabrics - anything to make them look more formal or less austere.

In the way I find a lot of unusual reports, I was tooling through Google searches and found a mention of Ikea Hackers in the Montreal Gazette. A couple had bought $4,000 worth of white IKEA cabinets and added crown mouldings and trim to give them a built-in look, equivalent they said to a $20,000 cabinetry job.

Interesting. So a search of IKEA Hackers turns up IKEAhackers.net, a website devoted to the practice, and it shows all kinds of tables, chairs and cabients wrapped, painted and built in or with added components like glass doors, to kick the IKEA up a notch.

You'll find IKEA hackers stuff at Pinterest, and a Flicker Group and an IKEA hackers Facebook site, to mention a few permutations.