Well, if this isn’t the cleverest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I’m all about making the things around my home ‘double as art’, and the latest? Professional DIY-er, Dalia Emad Aly, has gone viral for her super simple hack — that uses an IKEA magnetic knife-rack, no less — to transform her prayer mat into a work of art on the wall, while still making it easy to pull off and use during prayer time.
Inspired by the resurgence of 15th-century tapestries in modern interiors, it makes a feature of your beautiful, often handcrafted prayer mat, and what’s not to love about that? Plus, even if not for artistic reasons, it also solves any struggles with space and organization. I usually hang my prayer mat over a chair, but when I need to use the chair, it goes on the bed, and once it’s time to pray, it’s back on the floor. Not ideal.
To find out a little bit more about how she came up with the idea for this ingenious IKEA hack, as well as her step-by-step guide to recreating it in your own space, I spoke to Dalia, and here’s what she shared.
“I’ve always felt like we have such beautiful prayer rugs that we only take out to pray and then put away, and at the same time we decorate with non-functional tapestries, so I’ve been thinking about hanging up my praying rug as a tapestry for the longest time,” Dalia tells me. “At the same time, I want to attach and detach in a way that wouldn’t feel difficult for me to do five times a day, and that’s when I came up with the magnet idea.”
In the end, it was quite simple, though Dalia admits it took a few trials and errors to make it work both on and off the floor using IKEA’s KUNGSFORS Magnetic Knife Rack. This is step-by-step how she did it:
- Buy IKEA’s KUNGSFORS Magnetic Knife Rack or similar (see below).
- Attach it to your wall using Command Strips (available on Amazon). (Dalia did mention that it might not stay up forever, but this way is more renter-friendly. For something more secure, consider drilling the rack into your wall.)
- Attach four flat steel brackets (available on Amazon) along the top of the rug using a rivet gun (also available on Amazon). This ensures the rug can still lie flat. “I fastened four of the brackets to the rug, just to make sure that the magnet could really hold the weight of the rug,” adds Dalia.
The magnet that Dalia used was IKEA’s KUNGSFORS Magnetic Knife Rack. It can be mounted with Command Strips, but for a more secure footing, I’d recommend fixing it to your wall.
For an option that looks just as good when your prayer mat is down, this ‘extra-strong’ magnetic knife rack has a walnut finish, so looks far less industrial. It’s also available in bamboo and oak, too.
Depending on the size you need, this magnetic knife rack comes in 10, 12, 16, 17, and 20 inch sizes. It’s also received 4.6 out of 5 stars after 620 reviews, which is a comforting sign.
And, if you didn’t already know, this isn’t the first IKEA trick Dalia has up her sleeve. She regularly wows the world with her clever, cost-effective ideas — just take this IKEA flower box she transformed into a coffee table, for example.
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