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Gone IKEA Crazy: Johan's Ultimate Home Theater Hack

Ever wonder what it'd be like to take a bunch of IKEA LACK components, get hack-crazy, and build the greatest home theater you can imagine? Well, that's pretty much what Johan from Sweden has done, and my has he outdone himself. Come join us in sheer admiration as we witness his surgically perfected home theater, courtesy of our fancy in-line gallery.
 
 

So, where do we start? Brands-wise, we're looking at Castle, Infinity, Focal, and Audio Vector - all mainly European brands, but some can be found over here if you look hard enough. Everywhere you look, there's an infusion of personal detail. From the decals on the walls to the modern lighting choices, nothing is ignored and everything seems updated to an almost exaggerated extent. Not a bad thing, really, but man - just look at that DVD collection! Let's just hope there are no earthquakes in his area...

[Images: Johan]

Tags

inspiration, home theater, storage, shelf, ikea hack, ultimate, dvd shelves, johan

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Comments (18)

holy dvds, batman! that's incredible

posted by kdkaboom on April 11th 2009 at 7:30am
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Excellent work. The wall decal/art is not for me but most everything else is near-perfect.

posted by machete on April 11th 2009 at 2:48pm
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Pretty awesome! the walls, the bed nook! *apartment envy

posted by xDaniel on April 12th 2009 at 10:07am
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Nice!! Where can I find that circular shelf at?

posted by fluffypancakes on April 12th 2009 at 3:28pm
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Looks like it was a DIY project. Here's a Swedish translation of the description. :)

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fminhembio.com%2FZ3M-johan&sl=sv&tl=en

posted by ekoshyun on April 12th 2009 at 9:21pm
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Wow. Greate cohesive design. Love the neutrality of the dark greys and the rounded details in the rooms. I suggest digitizing all the movies, storing them in a media server (he probably already has one) and saving all the physical space.

In the first picture I thought he built the speakers using Lack components as the enclosures. Now that would have been extremely cool.

posted by Thomas on April 13th 2009 at 11:52am
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Wondering about the pull-out storage under the bed? Where is that from?

posted by Jordan Jennings on April 16th 2009 at 4:08pm
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Sweet zombie jesus!! Would you like to come hack my Ikea stuff?

posted by alisaan on April 17th 2009 at 9:28am
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sweet zombie jesus indeed....... im drooling on my keyboard. if only my music/dvd collection could be displayed like that!

posted by hla21 on April 20th 2009 at 3:46pm
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Black speakers would be a better idea. Those glossy white ones wi9ll reflect back onto the scree.

posted by SteveDodds on April 20th 2009 at 8:34pm
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Nice, but for $1,500 he could buy a server with enough storage to hold all of them and small enough to hide in a closet. With what he's already spent on AV gear, I'm guessing that would be a rounding error.

posted by miguel on April 20th 2009 at 11:38pm
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Love how he figured out a method of storage for all that media, which I'm glad.

I'm also glad he didn't ditch the DVD's in favor of a media server because as it is now, unless built for full def video, one has to rip, and compress the media furthan than DVD already is now and he seems to be as much an audiophile as he is a moviephile and purists don't revert to compressed technologies, just to remove their DVD/CD collections.

And besides, there is something tangible about having the artwork along w/ the media itself that is satisfying, something CD and DVD really can't do as well as the old vinyl format can IMO.

posted by ciddyguy on April 21st 2009 at 10:46am
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I don't think he could cost effectively store those DVDs at full resolution on a server. Call it 5 gigs a DVD, that's about 6TB. And if that crashed you'd be screwed with the ripping, so you'd want RAID of some sort. So conservatively you'd need at least 7TB to get the job done, more like 8TB. I don't think you could get that much drive space for less than $600-$700. Admittedly I haven't build a ground up machine in a while, but I'm not sure you could put together an enclosure for all that with a RAID controller for $800.

I think his setup looks amazing.

posted by Max on April 21st 2009 at 11:24am
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Anyone have information on the wall decals?? Where can I purchase those?!

posted by T_homme_boy2 on April 22nd 2009 at 3:13pm
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Hi folks! This is actiually my apartment, wierd finding it here (noone asked me before using my images). Kinda crazy since its my home (and rather personal) you're lookig at, but its ok :)

Nice to see so many of you like my set-up! It's a ridicolously expensive set-up but I love music so for me it sure is worth the money. To clerify a few things: The "Wall decals" are auctually paintings made by hand (by me). The pull-out storage under the bed is also home made. The speakers are not glossy, just plain matte white. The centre channel is sometimes a tiny bit reflective in the screen but nothing you can even see if you dont look for it.

I have a LOT (2x1Tb actiually) digital lossless music on hdds as well, of course, c'mon guys!

Ciddyguy: Vinyl is on it's way, I just have to find a place for a turntable and the software. ;)

/Johan

posted by emmet2 on May 14th 2009 at 9:59am
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That's a guy who likes his Laphroaig!

posted by James Simm on September 21st 2009 at 6:50am
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Hey Johan/emmet2

Apartment Therapy has used your images before too... I can't recall what term you would search under, maybe "media storage" or just "shelves," but I've seen this before. It's great seeing it a 2nd time and kicking myself in the ass for not doing anything that nice in our place... yet. lol

posted by dunklekatze on September 21st 2009 at 5:45pm
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That is brilliant.

posted by poppasmurf on September 25th 2009 at 3:29am
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