Ikea hack

Turn Ikea shelves into designer furniture

An easy DIY to upgrade your VITTSJÖ bookshelf
An easy DIY to upgrade your VITTSJÖ bookshelf

The InspirationWhat I want: Jonathan Adler’s Jacques Étagère

What it costs: $2,400

My budget: $100 

The Solution: Ikea Hack. Time to take a cue from some of my favourite innovative designers and purchase a simple, run-of-the-mill piece from Ikea and give it a facelift with a bit of time and ingenuity. 

 

 

Domaine Home online shows us just how stylish these pieces can be:

ikea hacks    Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 7.40.21 AMScreen Shot 2015-03-13 at 7.40.33 AM

 

 

Bloggers at Pencil Shavings Studio and Little Green Notebook also have a wonderful step by step instruction manual to turn your brown utilitarian bookshelf into solid gold (no pun intended).

You’ll need:

How To:

I purchased my VITTSJÖ bookshelf and bought some gold spray paint from Michaels. You’ll need about four cans. You could use gold leaf paper, but it would be incredibly time-consuming and I was happy with the outcome using the spray paint.

Put the bookcase together first before spray painting (without the glass shelves) to get a more even flow with the spray paint and also to ensure that it dries properly with out sticking or spotting. You’ll also need a backyard or an open space to do the spray painting, as the fumes were pretty intense.

The idea is to make the shelves look like marble (without actually forking out for marble), but I painted the two black shelves white as my marble-contact-paper-application skills leave a lot to be desired. But if you’re game, give the marble contact paper a shot — the results are pretty stellar.

Check out what I came out with:

Before:                                            After:

vittsjo shelving unit, ikea, ikea hack

The basic bitch of bookshelves.

bookcase, ikeahack, gold spray paint

Pure gold. (Except, not actually.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adorable puppy not included, so don’t even think about it. But do check out these other awesome Ikea hacks for more inspiration: