IKEA Hack Cabinet From IKEA Storage Organiser

If there’s one thing I am utterly crap at, it’s organising. I don’t mean holidays or parties… I’m talking organising, as in storage. Storage for the mundane stuff that we all need. Letters, passports, sellotape, random foreign currency, instructions for my first ever laptop… it all gets thrown in a drawer together and abandoned until I can bring myself to sort it out. Or until the drawer won’t shut. Whichever comes first. If only I could come up with a genius IKEA hack cabinet to get it all in order…

Enter, the IKEA Storage Organiser

Moppe Mini Chest of Drawers

These cute little storage boxes have been available for years and are pretty affordable, retailing at around £10-£20, depending on size and style. You can sometimes pick these up in charity stores, often pre-painted. Don’t worry about that though. Unless it’s been a truly savage DIY, you can pretty much salvage anything.

My version, is sadly no longer available. It’s been hiding in the attic for a while now, and was in a sorry state. There was a roll of camera film and a minidisk in one of the drawers… that’s how long it has remained unopened.

You can see she’s had it rough! A poor attempt at veneering has left this storage organiser pretty shabby. Sorry, storage organiser. My bad.

How To; IKEA Hack Cabinet

The problem with these units are that they just don’t look substantial. They’re really well made, but appear flimsy due to the thickness of the framing and the shallow depth. To make these look like a piece of furniture, they need to appear chunkier and deeper. A base plinth or legs would also help to elevate them and give them more importance. Maybe even stack a few to give more height? You can get a good range of furniture legs on ebay.

You can see from this top view, where the wooden sides and bottom has been clad in plywood and extended. This will give a more substantial surface area for the top and, as I’ve since discovered, this void at the back is great for hiding excess cable from lamps etc. You could also use it to hide excess chocolate bars. The plywood was simply glued in place using wood glue.

The Beauty Is In The Detail

I decided to go for a vintage industrial style look for my IKEA hack cabinet, so wanted to get some rustic looking wood involved. Using some leftover oak from the original bathroom renovation (here), I created a nice solid looking top. Already, you can see the difference his makes.

You can also see that I have removed all of the horrendous veneer. You’re welcome, storage organiser! The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice that I have turned the drawers around. This is so that the scoop handles are at the back and I can get a nice plain front to add handles to.

The next step was to paint ‘er up. Have used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint before, I was keen to give it a go again, but to really pay about this time. So I did! Mixing Napoleonic Blue, Abusson Blue and Florence, I painted each part with a base coat, allowing it to dry, before adding a different colour on top with a relatively dry brush. I did this several times, before giving a coat of clear wax. Once this dried, I sanded some areas back then added a coat of black wax. This dulled everything down nicely, giving it that more industrial feel. The top got a coat of black wax too. Nowhere was safe from the black wax.

A good buff later and she was ready for some new handles and some shiny new pins. Hairpins, to be exact.

I LOVE the handles. A TK Maxx clearance find at £5.00! The legs? I don’t love, on this. They may get changed at some point. They were a bargain ebay find at £15.00 for 4 though.

I think you’ll agree,  this IKEA hack cabinet is a definite upgrade to furniture status. Not too expensive either at roughly £60 in total.

Now to sort my messy drawers out…