IKEA Expedit turns into beautiful blue sideboard cabinet

I used to have 2 Ikea Expedit shelves in my living room, one next to the other.

I actually really liked the look of it, but after almost 2 years I got bored and totally fell in love with the idea of hiding all the books and little items behind some cabinet doors.

Also I love the colour turquoise and so I decided to use my Christmas holidays for a major Expedit makeover.

I disassembled one of the shelves and left out some boards before building it together again.

I bought some plywood and fibrewood boards in a hardware centre and cut them into the right measures. I also bought doorknobs, hinges, super power glue, strips of wood, furniture wax and acrylic paint.

To design fake drawers I cut the wood strips into pieces, sanded them thoroughly and glued them onto the cabinet doors.

I created my own teal chalkpaint by mixing acrylic paint, water and calcium carbonate. I then painted the cabinet doors and the Expedit shelf on the outside.

For the inside of the shelf and the doors I did the same mixing orange chalk paint.

When everything was dry, which happens unbelievably quick, I rubbed in some stinky furniture wax, which completely seals the paint and makes it very durable, shiny and lovely. The stink went away after 24 hours luckily.

Next I placed the doorknobs.

For the top of my sideboard I sanded a huge plywood board and stained it with a mix of the colours mahogany and walnut, sealing it, again, with furniture wax.

I then fixed it onto the Expedit using large screws from the inside and glue.

I added feet to my Expedit and nailed fibreboard to the back.

The trickiest part was actually to add the hinges, as I had used such thin plywood boards for my cabinet doors, that I could not find any screws short enough not to come out on the other side of the wood. (Therefore remember: invest a little more money and buy stronger, high quality wood!)

As there was no way to use screws on the doors I decided to glue extra wood strips on the inside of the cabinet doors that would support the door’s weight resting on top the Expedit shelving when closed. It is definitely not a perfect solution, but I then glued the hinges onto the doors and screwed them into the Expedit corpus.

Until now it has been surprisingly stable

The result is much better than I had expected.

I am so proud of myself that I managed to build this lovely sideboard without anything but my hands, not being equipped with electronic saws, high end machines, etc.

~ by Lena

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