Hack Ikea Furniture

After

Before

I was looking for shoe racks for the longest time for my new apartment. When I spot this one in Ikea for only $29.99 I knew I've found the one. Forget about shoe racks. I will stick with the golden rule of tackling down all the mess around the apartment...hide it! I've bought enough of file storage boxes and kitchen storage containers to prove that rule. The only problem of this shoe cabinet is the ugly birch color which is also easy to be solved by just few coats of paint. I know that I have been talking about this project for a while and finally I got this done by last Sunday. Lesson that I have learned this time? NEVER forget that most Ikea furnitures aren't made of real wood and no wood stain or polyurethane is ever needed (and I'm truly thankful for Canadian Tire's return policy)!

Here are some more pictures:

Because the shoe cabinet is made of laminated particle boards, it would be hard to paint over the surface without any prep. You can either slightly sand the surface by using fine grit sandpaper (220grits) or using primer if you are like me that aren't too sure about your sanding skills. A guy from House Hardware store told me that I should be looking for a primer that's for vinyl. I used foam brush to apply the primer because I don't want to leave any strokes on the surface and I used foam roller to put on the high gloss black paint.

After two coats of primer

Project's done after two coats of primer, three coats of high gloss paint (for the first time that I actually strictly and patiently followed the instructions about the waiting period between each coat) and my leftover wallpaper again.