Grown-Up Tinker Toys Let You Build Your Own Everything

Unless you have a large budget for furnishing your home, chances are you’ve had to assemble a few pieces of furniture in your life. Flat-pack furniture is a lifesaver for those who need to save some cash, but it can be a bit lacking in personality. Designer David Graas has created something that is as far away from conventional DIY furniture as you can get.

Turning his back on the IKEA model, Graas invented a building kit called “Everything But the Manual.” It is, in essence, Tinker Toys for adults. It isn’t just for fun, though – this set is meant to build furniture, creative accents, and anything you can imagine. It consists of 260 oak sticks, each 415 mm long and 26 mm square, full of evenly-spaced holes.

The sticks are held together by bolts and wingnuts. There are no instructions, no recommended projects – just some raw materials waiting for your creativity to build them into something wonderful. The projects pictured here range from the purely artistic (a tall wooden stand for a cuckoo clock) to the completely practical (a vanity table and bench) to a surprisingly fun blend of the two (a leaning tower-like lamp).

Graas says that he doesn’t even know how many configurations the set can make – that’s entirely up to the user. It’s a refreshing take on DIY, a segment of the market in which people are typically handed the materials and a set of instructions and told exactly what to make and how to make it.