FÖRHÖJA Cart For Art: Another Ikea Hack

The new MOPPE sideboard that I built replaced this Ikea FÖRHÖJA"kitchen cart," previously used as a kitchen island and more recently as a storage piece in the living room.  It was home to a 10g fishtank (recently updated to a 20g), a potted Benjamina Ficus, four Ikea SNALIS plastic storage bins filled with aquarium supplies and other random items, and a cat scratcher nobody was using anymore.

I loved my FÖRHÖJA, I just wanted to change the color and repurpose it.

So I Did! 

Meet my new art cart/table!  Many, many coats of stain and sanding sessions went into this. People, there were problems with staining this thing.  All told I went through four different stains, who knows how many coats of each, and sanded it all down and started over THREE TIMES.  The end result of all that abuse is a cart that's a bit rustic looking, which I did not want, but it's FINE the way it IS because it's DONE.  HMPH!

Anyway. I actually do love it now that it's finished. :)

This thing has 30+ pieces.  That was a lot of staining and sanding and staining.

So! Much! Storage! 

So many drawers!  Baskets! Stuff!!

I added a two-prong hook to the front for aprons and towels; and a hanging Ikea basket (BYGEL, spray painted gold) to the side to hold large tools and bottles and brushes.


I got the water hyacinth baskets on Amazon, and lemmetellya, they're my favorite thing about this whole piece.  I looooove the way these things smell. 

The MOPPE drawer boxes on top are the ones I made in August.

I also added a 6" board to the top, on a pair of long tension hinges, so that I could extend the table top for a larger work surface, and also have some storage space behind/under the unit for large canvases and boards...but it doesn't work!

Turns out the long hinges aren't strong enough to hold up the extension when you put any weight on it (I think they're made more for holding trunk/chest lids open); so eventually I'll need to get a better holdy-uppy solution so I can use the extension.














As much trouble as the stain and the hinges have been, I LOVE it now that it's finally done!  It's taller than my old art table, which is fantastic - I'm 5'9, I have a tall easel, and I like BIG canvases.  It also takes up significantly less floor space than my old table, which opens up the "art room" behind the couch.  The extra floor space also helps with getting Shelly in and out of the back door - she's weird about her walking clearance, and won't go through anything too narrow, and won't step over, like, a SHOE that's in her path. Weird dog. (She's really old). 

More space in a tiny duplex is always welcome! 

Now I have a great new space to do more stuff like this:

Volcanic Seascape, November 2018, after a USGS photo of Hawaii's coastline back in July when Kileauea erupted

[Funko Pop] Bob Ross, patron saint of aspiring artists ❤

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.