MOPPE Sideboard, Finished

Folks, we have a finished apothecary/card-catalog sideboard, made with Ikea MOPPE chests:

At the end of the last post, I'd just finished assembling this thing.  In case you're curious, it went a little something like this.  Ignore the measurements on the paper; things got adjusted a bit when I realized the actual measurements of the MOPPEs are not exactly what Ikea's website say they are.  But this is the general idea of how the thing went together.  Essentially, I just made a house for the MOPPEs to live in - top, bottom, sides, and dividers in between each column of MOPPEs. Everything was glued together and/or joined with glue and dowels. 

 I decided not to put feet on this thing, as it was already 38" high, and that's tall enough for me.  I keep a fishtank on top of this thing, and there's only so high I can reach to clean the tank, you know? 

After all the glue was dry, I sanded and stained the entire thing, then clear-coated it with Polycrylic to protect the wood.  Most of this thing only has a single clear coat; the top got three coats, to be on the safe side - again, because I keep a fishtank on top of it. All the drawers are very different, because of the wood that Ikea uses in the MOPPEs. I think it's kind of neat. 

Adventures in engineering:  how the heck did I get this from the detached garage into the house, over a rocky pebble driveway? I used a pair of 5' shelf boards I had laying around.  I slid the unit onto one, and laid the second in front.  Slid the unit onto the second one, moved the first one to the front, and so on.  It took a minute, but it worked beautifully, and even allowed me to ramp the unit up over the front step and the threshhold without incident.  Whew! 

54 drawers got stained, sanded,  and clearcoated. 54 knobs (3/4" screw buttons) were glued in place, and then 54 label holders, labels, and 108 of the tiniest screws I'd ever seen. 

Lastly, 54 papers  were inserted, and the drawers went into the unit:

And it's done!  That was both a ridiculous amount of work (look at the size of this thing! (Cut the chatter, Red 2), and hardly any work at all.  All this really entailed was building a frame to house a bunch of pre-made boxes, which were all glued in place.  I had the shelf boards that I used for the top, bottom, sides, and dividers cut to length and width at the hardware store; I only did a little adjusting on my saw at home to make sure things fit perfectly.  

So, what happens to the Ikea FORHOJA cart that used to occupy this space?  

More on that soon. 

The Greatest Ikea Hack of All Time (For Me, Anyway)

How do you take a cheap Ikea organizer unit and turn it into a huge, expensive, pain in the butt?  Like this:

Okay, wait.  First, let me show you my inspiration and supplies:

This is a photo I found on Pinterest that made me gasp and clutch my pearls.  I slowly craned my neck around behind me like the girl in the Exorcist and glared at my MOPPE art table organizer unit.  My roommate dropped her pen and asked, "What is wrong with you??"


That apothecary cabinet.  The first thought I had as soon as I let go of those pearls was, I could MAKE THAT.








Here are the two Ikea MOPPEs I fixed up for my art table back in August. 

I adore it.  But what if I had another one...that was HUGE...and could hold all the little household bits and pieces?  I remember thinking, while staining these things, "A whole bunch of these could be kinda cool."









Here's the Ikea MOPPE by itself, as it comes from the store - unstained and fully assembled.

Very potential.  Such ideas.  Wow.











I spent about a week planning and sketching, and making supply lists.  When I was ready, I walked through Ikea pushing this thing around:

I swear there were PLENTY more left on the shelf. 

The first thing I did was set about staining 9 boxes and 54 drawers:

This is only about a third of them. 

As soon as  the boxes were stained and dry, I started assembling the unit: I set out three boxes on my bottom board, dowelled and glued them all together, and then set in the remaining six boxes the same way.  

All the clamps I own. 

Before adding the top board, I glued in six 1/4" square sticks behind the boxes.  I know the boxes are glued in securely; but just on the off chance that repeated use of the drawers knocks them loose (it won't), these sticks might add a little extra security against the boxes being pushed out of place (won't need it).  There's so much open space behind them; I really wish I could have made this thing double-sided. Right now it's going to be used against a wall, but one day it might make a nifty room divider or something.  Maybe I can go back and add more boxes in the future.  For now, when this is done, the back will be covered by a sheet of Luan.

Surprisingly not front-heavy. 

While I was waiting for all the glue to dry, I stained a billion more drawers.  I also cut out papers for the drawer bottoms (thanks, Past Me, for making templates in August that I could use later!), and labels to go into the labels holders waiting to go onto this piece.

Fiskars paper cutter FTW. 

As much as I want to show you a picture of a finished project - it's not done yet!  I can't WAIT to see this thing finished!  I'm hoping it will be by the end of the week.  I'll post updates along the way.



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Ikea HEMNES Pantry Cabinet: Part II

BEFORE

Hi.

This is my Ikea  HEMNES cabinet-turned-pantry.  You may remember it from such posts as this one from October.

I'd gone back and forth with the idea of painting it for months before I frosted the glass in October;  but once that was done, I was sure, and I was just waiting for a chance to get to it.

Enter Thanksgiving weekend.  I don't celebrate it, myself, but I had five days off of work, and my roommate was out of town for one of those days, so I prepped and painted this thing in about eight hours.

Here's the whole thing after painting.  *drooool*  I LOVE IT.

There was barely any finish on this thing to begin with, so all it took was deglossing and then sanding very lightly to get a good surface for the paint.

The paint itself is a 50/50 mixture of plain black semi-gloss latex and black latex chalkboard paint.  I guess that makes it quarter-gloss?  I don't know.  But the texture and sheen are really nice.  I love a piece of furniture that feels good.

For the first few hours I worked on this, I was listening to Hamilton, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Every time I look at this picture in particular, I get Wait For It stuck in my head all over again.

I almost painted the inside of this unit a pale muted blue.  I'll be honest with you, the reason I didn't was that I didn't want to go to the store to get blue paint.  There are days when you just don't want to put a bra on, you know?

The knobs and drawer pulls I used on this unit are Ikea's FAGLAVIK, which, sadly, was discontinued about three years ago.  They're so smooth and soft and pretty.  They had a brushed nickel version, a chrome, and a brushed brass - these guys.  I looooove them .

I mean, that's just sexy.

















I love this cabinet.  I love the color.  I love that it didn't become a big black hole like I was worried it would.  I love the way the glass and the black look together.

But wait til you guys see my other Thanksgiving weekend project.  I'm almost done with it, and I'm crazy excited to show it to you!




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Obligatory Halloween Post

Ya'll, I really thought I posted this weeks ago.  Whoops.

I didn't go all out for Halloween this year - I threw my first Halloween party in five years! - but I did go, like, maybe 50% out.  Here's some spooky stuff:

Every flat surface in the house was littered with plastic spiders, bugs, snakes, vampire teeth, and dead rose petals.

I only got to do one dead bouquet this year, but I kind of loved it.

1.  There were also googly eyes on everything

2. Hammers are scary. What?

Funny story about the "formaldehyde" these eyeballs are soaking in:  I didn't have any food coloring, but I remembered that the ammonia test kit for my aquarium turns water greenish yellow (as long as there's no ammonia).  So I did that.  But apparently the tester drops were detecting the living hell out of something in these painted foam eyeballs, because it just kept getting greener and greener and GREENER.  So I bought food coloring.

ALL THE GOOGLY EYES

The mother of all creepy-crawlies: this  aquarium full of spiders.  I covered the wall behind it and nearby furniture with spiders, too.  Escapees.  Mwahaha.

Frank here doesn't make a great disco ball, but he tried.

Where did I even GET a glitter skull? Why do I have this?

Family photo wall, from top left:   Edith from Crimson Peak, some random internet witch, Sweeney Todd from the film version of the musical with Johnny Depp, Rupert Giles from one of the Buffy Halloween episiodes, and Igor from Young Frankenstein.

Other frames around the house were filled with spooky old Victorian homes (including the one from Practical Magic), and creepy graveyard angel statues.

"Bleeding" white taper candles made by dripping red wax all over them. I only burned myself like six times.

Booze & candy bar, with a ouija board drawn on a chalkboard I made for the kitchen, and paper bats flying around and up to the ceiling.

I re-painted the chalkboard labels on these canisters and added some more to the new canisters so they'd all match.  They're labeled with spell ingredients from Macbeth.

Danger noodle ftw.

It me!  I was a witch.  My friend Laurie insisted on getting a photo of me from above for some reason, which is why this looks like a selfie.  I think she liked the hat. It is a pretty cool hat.









← that's a tattoo on my shoulder, not a visible bra strap

Every witch needs her black cat, right?  I have two.  This one is Rabi.





















Stay spooky, friends.  KTHXBAI.