Upcycling on a budget!

For the longest time I have been staring at a mini chest of drawers from Ikea and trying to get around to upcycling it. I bought it many years ago for my son to keep his rock and fossil collection in and then he gave it to his sister and she kept her bits and bobs in it and then her younger sister had it to keep her junk in so it has been around the block a bit. They decided at the grand old ages of 16 and 13 that they no longer needed it and so it came into my possession. 

So it sat in my bedroom for many months looking forlorn and feeling very sorry for itself. I housed my collection of bangles and bracelets in it and left it at that. 

One day last week I finally decided what to do with it ...

This is the before picture. It did have all the numbers for handles but I tried the round ceramic on for size before I took the photo and then decided not to use them afterall.

I bought a tester pot of Farrow & Ball paint in Lulworth Blue and set about painting it. I then got out some of my printed paper collection and chose some that went nice with the paint.  I lay the paper pattern side down and traced around the drawers. I then cut them out and glued them to the drawers using a cheap PVA glue. When the glue had dried I trimmed off any excess with a Stanley knife. While the glue was drying, I gave the unit a coating of quick drying varnish and when the drawers had dried I did the same with them. I left the whole thing to dry properly overnight. The whole project cost me £3.99 which was the cost of the paint.

The project took very little time apart from waiting for things to dry. Any left over paint you have laying around can be used and you could use wallpaper samples on the drawers as well. PVA glue is available very cheaply and I think mine was £1.99 for 500ml from The Works and it was my daughters so we already had it.

Photography is not my strongest point as you have probably guessed but you can see the difference a bit of paint and paper can make.

My next project is to create a patchwork wall in my bedroom using wallpaper samples so hopefully I will be able to show you that soon or perhaps something else I am currently working on ...