As a joint Christmas / Birthday present, my wife and her dad turned a a MARKÖR cabinet into a cigar humidor. In effect, an "ikeador." The pics are here:
Ikeador - a photoset on Flickr
BACKGROUND:
As they're a natural product, cigars do best when they're stored at around 70% relative humidity. A humidor is a box or cabinet used for storing cigars. Some cigar stores have entire rooms which maintain 70% humidity for cigar storage.
As humidors are specialty items that can be expensive (and most cigar collectors would rather spend their money on cigars) often, cigar collectors will re-purpose other containers for cigar storage as their collection grows. They'll affix the letters 'dor' on the end, to indicate its being used for cigar storage.
For example, a cooler is a popular choice, as they maintain temperature and humidity well. A cooler-humdior becomes a "coolerdor." Here's an example of one of my old cigar coolerdors:
fez_coolerdor on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
You can see the humidification device, called a "Credo" in the bottom left, and the hygrometer, for reading the humidity, in the upper right.
A fridge used for cigars might become a "fridgeador:"
My Cigar Site
However, stacks of coolers or old fridges are generally not considered very attractive in a living room, so cigar collectors sometimes re-purpose furniture.
Enter the Ikeador.
My friend Lawrence was the first person I knew who built an Ikeador. His pictures are here:
Cigar Weekly: Community: User Galleries: the nub's Gallery :: Ikeador and Humidors
Once my wife heard about Ikeadors she decided I needed one too, so we could move my stack of six coolers out of the room that was to become the baby's room. She and her father spent many afternoons modifying an Ikea cabinet in order to create it.
They started with a MARKÖR cabinet:
IKEA | Cabinets & sideboards | Display cabinets | MARKĂ–R | Glass-door cabinet
...and put weather-stripping around the doors and the inside. Sealing the Ikeador helps hold in the humidity.
They replaced the wood shelves with custom glass shelves so there was air circulation space front and back.
Finally, new magnets at the top help hold the doors closed.
The interior is lined with a wood known as "Spanish Cedar." It is in fact not cedar at all - It's a mahogany known as Cedrela.
Spanish Cedar possesses the following desirable characteristics for cigar
storage:
1) It holds more moisture than most woods, so it helps maintain humidity.
2) It imparts its pleasant aroma to cigars if they are stored in it for long enough.
3) Spanish-cedar wood can repel tobacco beetles. These pinhead-sized beetles can ruin entire stocks of cigars. They eat the tobacco and lay eggs, causing further infestation.
4) The wood properties is not prone to "warping" or "cupping" in high humidity.
You can read more about Cedrela here:
Cedrela - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Finally, an electronic "Cigar Oasis" humidification device filled with distilled water helps keep the Ikeador at 70% humidity:
Cigar Oasis Electronic Cigar Humidifiers Cigar Humidor Humidification
Hope you found the project interesting.
Cheers,
Geoff in Vancouver, Canada
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