Customizing Furniture

So you have moved into your first place- maybe it is a dorm, an apartment, or a new house with a new spouse....but, your budget only allows for ramen noodles and putting your car up on blocks. How on earth can you have custom furniture? Your whole place just ends up looking like an Ikea catalogue- and the lower end IKEA pages at that. It can feel depressing because you hate having such plain, yet economical, furniture. Well I am here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way- you can customize all that Ikea furniture and make your place much more appealing! Here are some tips

1. Paint it!

I covered this one in my Rast hack post! A lot of Ikea furniture comes in a raw wood version. You can easily paint it to make it look like a unique piece! And yes, I am still picking a new colour for this- I will share later!

2. Change the hardware

This one can make a world of difference. Ikea furniture often comes with plain wooden handles. By switching it out with some fun knobs or pulls, you can really make it look more high-end. On my armoire, I changed the hardware from chunky wooden ones to metal pulls. Sometimes hardware is expensive, but you just got to keep an eye out- I got these pulls for under $2 each!

3. Match the hardware

You will often accumulate your Ikea over time and through sales and donations- so it is rare that everything will be from the same line! My TV stand came with nice knobs, but they were a dark oil rubbed bronze colour. By switching them out with brushed nickel, it ties the TV stand in with the armoire and dresser, and even the handles in the kitchen! It also helps that both the TV stand and the dresser/armoire set have the same chunky feet.

4. Customize the function

Sometimes it can be hard to find the perfect piece of furniture in your budget. But with an investment of a couple of dollars in hardware, you can customize the function of a cheap Ikea piece. The brackets I bought to make this dresser fit my boots only cost about $2!

5. Be creative!

Have some fun and make an existing feel fresh and maybe more functional! I picked my armoire for a couple of reasons- they were cheap and short (the ceiling is only about 7 feet under the bulkhead). The double one was only $100 and the skinny shelving one was $90. But they had see through fronts that just looked messy, no matter how organized my clothes were. So I used wrapping paper to make it more fun and functional! The best part is that I can change the paper whenever I want to re-do my colour scheme!

I hope this post will give you some motivation to customize your Ikea stuff. I can't possibly leave you, however, without telling you about www.ikeahackers.net. I have gotten so much inspiration from looking at the customization jobs that people have done to their Ikea furniture! There are a lot of great tutorials for transforming Ikea to look like high-end furniture. If you have completed an Ikea Hack, please share!