On Before and After you saw the pre and post DIY of some colorful drawers/chest from IKEA. These were relics from previous apartment moves, and some cheap sale items from the “As-is” departments. I was looking for ways to customize my furniture because I hate to waste things so I went online, looking for inspiration. After much searching I found Lindsay.  Her DIY prowess and ability to make things her own amazed me and I decided to do something about my chest of drawers/cabinets.

So using her tutorial here, with a few modifications of my own (below) I made my IKEA my own for the kids room.

What you need to know:

• You dont need a large work area to do this, only a dedicated one you can keep closed especially if you have kids, pets or both. Why– To keep them safe from fumes and keep fingerprints off while the paint dries. We gave up our bedroom and shacked up with the kids. This is what our room looked like for a week:
  

• COVER IT- its worth the time saved in clean up afterwards.
• GET ADVENTUROUS- it can always be changed. Paint is cheap.

What I changed from Lindsay:

• I did not take my furniture apart. It was old and would not have been able to take the disassemble and reassemble process very well. I figured if I used enough masking tape I would be able to keep it contained to where I wanted it. And if it was not visible then it did not matter anyway.
• We bought a sanding attachment to our drill and went right into it with a 180 grit paper but on a slow run. It will take just enough off, and fast.
• We used B.I.N PRIMER with Ultimate Stain Block. Its a bit more expensive than the one that Lindsay used but dries in 15 minutes to the touch and 45 minutes for another coat. We left it to dry overnight anyway and did 2 coats of primer instead of one.
• We ROLLERed on everything with a 4″ foam roller– Primer, Paint and even the final Polyacrylic protective coat. I just dont like brush strokes…! The small parts were finished with a 1″ or 2″ foam brush, but I got pretty good with using the roller so turned it in different ways to get a smooth finish.
• Another thing about the roller-If your roller is not running evenly be BOLD and dip in the primer/paint/polyacrylic again. Also make sure you scrape the paint off the stick and handle each time you change the foam attachment. That helps!

• 2 and sometimes 3 coats of paint as needed. I watered down the paint a bit to make it easier to apply, but the final coat was with thicker paint. Always leave paint, even quick dry paint, overnight to dry.

Thats it!