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 ❤

My Own Personal Tiny Nature Channel

Just, you know, go ahead and read this whole post in Sir David Attenborough's voice.  For fun. 

This is my aquarium: 

It's a 10-gallon* freshwater planted tank which holds five live plants, two sections of driftwood,  one tiny baby ramshorn snail who I assume hitched a ride on a plant as an egg, and two Blue Velvet/Blue Rili shrimp named Fancy and Pants.  (Guy at the fish shop: "Y'all move out the way so I can sell this nice lady some fancy pants shrimps!" and LO, they were named). 

However, now that I have the MOPPothecary unit done and set up, the small tank looked tiny - and I finally had room to expand into a bigger tank! Hooray!

This is my aquarium on drugs No, wait, THIS is my aquarium: 

Here's the same cast, this time on a 20-gallon stage instead of a 10.  It looks so empty!  It IS a lot of tank for two 1" shrimp, but, after I get some more plants, more shrimp, and some tiny silvery fishes, it'll be teeming with life.

I made the background for it myself - it's a screenshot of the sacred forest from the Miyazaki film Princess Mononoke.  I adjusted the pic for size and shape on Blockposter.com, printed the pdf they gave me, taped it together, and taped it to the back of the tank.  The tree-i-ness of it blends with the driftwood roots and gives the tank kind of an underwater-forest look.  

Here are Fancy (left) and Pants).  Near as I can tell, Fancy is a girl and Pants is a boy.  Of course, I could be wrong about that, I'm not shrimp junk expert.  I'd be perfectly happy being the owner of a billion little blue shrimps, but I'm also perfectly happy just having two, so, whatever they feel like doing or not doing, that's just fine with me. 

* I can't type the word "gallon" without first typing "gallong" to save my life. It's not the only word it happens to.  People named Kevin(g), you have my apologies. 

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. 

FIRA

This is the bank of Ikea MOPPEs that I finished at the beginning of August.  Sort of a card-catalog-y look, to store my art supplies in.

MOPPE is Ikea's answer to all the crafty people who are and will forever be upset that they discontinued the FIRA.  Looking back, I wish I'd bought a bazillion FIRAs to play with; but at least I have one.

It started life as this jewelry box, stained, painted, and lined with fabric.

I don't know when this was, maybe 2009? 2011?

It got a makeover in 2012, in which I painted it white, papered the insides of the drawers, and attached little knobs to the drawers and painted wooden candlesticks to use as feet.

In 2014 it became a coffee station organizer.  Painted brown and decorated with label holders from some cardboard Ikea photo boxes similar to the FJALLA they have now. In this pic there's a little tray on top that I painted to match.

Four years later it's looking a little crappy. The label holders keep coming off, and the labels don't stay in place anymore. The finish is chipped and scratched, and let's face it, brown paint is NOT stain.

It was time for an upgrade.

FIRA getting stripped;                     holes in the fronts from the label holders;            tearing paper off the insides. 

I stripped the whole thing down and re-stained it.   I re-papered the drawers, but first I repainted the insides using the same Rustoleum "Chalky" spray paint that I used to makeover the Ikea RASKOG cart in the living room.  I also put little corner feet on the box, and used white paper covered with Washi tape for the labels.

♥ ♥ ♥

My coffee and tea rest secure once again. The FIRA now sort of matches the MOPPEs, and makes a much more attractive coffee-stuff organizer.  I love the feet! They mean that we can store fewer little odds-n-ends on top of the FIRA (less clutter is good!), but I've always loved how raised furniture makes a space feel bigger and more open than it is - even if it's only a 12x16" piece of mini-furniture on a counter.

Random papers in the drawers, and you can sort of see the taupe ("mink") Chalky paint inside

The entire coffee center, next to the kitchen sink. 

Because I know there's at least one of you who's noticed this:  yes, the feet prevent the two side drawers on the bottom row from opening.  You can get to them by removing the center drawer and sliding the corner drawers to the center to pull out.  I have things in those side drawers that we won't need very often, like filters for the Keurig, and tea accessories we almost never use, because neither of us is a huge tea drinker.  I love these little feet, and I'm okay with the sacrifice they required, hehe.

Also, yes, I will be writing on those labels, just as soon as I get a new Sharpie with a good, chiseled point. All the sharpies at home are dulled from writing on cardboard in the move.

*

Art Storage: An Ikea Hack*

In March of 2017, I started refinishing what would become my art table.  I got 2.5 legs stripped, and then had to stop because I broke my foot...and then I never got started again.  This will be one of my next projects, but for the time being, it still works great as an art table. Over the weekend, I picked up a couple of Ikea MOPPEs to create some storage for the top:

The MOPPE comes already assembled, so I didn't have much work to do here.


I stained the entire thing(s) with Minwax's "Dark Walnut", and added knobs and labels.

At the moment, I have butcher paper covering the table surface;  my plan is to make a custom plexiglass top for it once it's done, to protect the wood and so that I can just wipe up paint spatters without damaging the wood - as old as this table is (possibly early 20thC; more likely a 70s or 80s piece made to look like an antique).

Eventually, the table will be stained the same color, and my hope is that the table and MOPPEs will look like a single piece of furniture.

The knobs here are 1/2" button plugs from the hardware store, just glued to the drawer fronts (actually the drawer backs). 

The labels are cardstock from an old sketchbook, affixed with tiny black tacks - an idea I saw on Pinterest.

The end result is enough like a card catalog or apothecary cabinet that I'm kind of in love with them!





For now, though, I am LOVING the MOPPEs!!

Next Up: 

More living room?! 

* I refrained from titling this post “MOPPE It Up”. You’re welcome.