It sounds easy; using temporary wall paper and such to give new life to old furniture. Just cut and apply! Anyway, that’s what Pinterest and craft bloggers say anyway.
I’ve been wanting to try this for awhile. We are a family that moves quite a bit and IKEA furniture is cheap, it doesn’t matter if it gets slightly damaged in the process of a cross country trip, and it actually holds up quite well. The problem is that it generally looks very manufactured and temporary. So when we were replacing our TV it meant we needed a larger entertainment center. Instead of spending a few hundred dollars on something that we weren’t going to be happy with, we expanded our current tv stand by spending about 100.00 at IKEA and getting one more Besta shelf and about 100.00 on various temporary paint and wall paper.
This is our after picture. Instead of rebuying IKEA Besta in white, we opted to use TemPaint in the color white. We also chose an old style wood temp wall paper. The TemPaint product has some texture to it and the temporary wallpaper is pretty matte. I was worried it would be shiny or too vinyl feeling, but it surprisingly isn’t.
Here is a before and after photo. If you plan on doing a large craft project, make sure to take before photos or you’ll end up searching your hard drive for hours for any before photo you can use.
If you opt to try something like this yourself, make sure you have something to act as a squeegee to push the air bubbles out as you go. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it is a one person job. It takes a long time. If you read something that tells you it takes just an hour or two, they are LYING TO YOU!!!!! This took us three days. Finally, don’t count on IKEA to not discontinue the product you love. We ended up getting a different door for the third shelf and we had to find the extra legs on Amazon.
I’m not going to provide step by step directions for this project because that sounds exhausting to write, but I will provide you some of the links I used for inspiration and help.
Two Story Cottage: Wallpaper Dresser Tutorial Complete With Don’ts