Revamp: IKEA Drawers

I'm all about projects that fall into the instant gratification category lately. And here's a great example.


In the span of an afternoon, surrounded (or should I say "helped") by an eager 3-year-old and a fussy baby boy, I revamped a pretty disgusting, cheapo drawer cabinet from IKEA.

This cabinet has lived under my desk for years, it is great for storing all my miscellaneous office supplies. When we moved a year and half ago, my efficient husband taped all the drawers together to keep them from shifting during transport. He didn't wrap them for protection first and after a sweltering mid-summer cross-country move, those particle board drawers never recovered.


Ever since our move, they've sported some yucky streaks of tape residue that have gotten covered in lint and dust. I've tried several times to scrape or wash them off, to no avail. It was time to cover them up! What better choice but some Anna Maria Horner fabric! Specifically: a fat quarter of her latest collection, Innocent Crush.

Here's a little tutorial to show you how I accomplished this little revamp...

First off, measure your drawers:


Iron your fabric, then figure out which area of the pattern you want to feature on your drawers. Determine what will be the middle and then, according to your measurements, determine where to cut on each side.


Carefully cut your fabric to exactly the size of the drawers (blurry picture, sorry!):


Remove hardware from your drawers:


From this next part on, remove your drawers from their cabinet if you can. I couldn't figure out how to take the drawers out (that's IKEA for you, once it's built you can't take it apart, ha!), so I just laid the whole thing backward so that the drawer surface would be flat and horizontal.

Lay your fabric down onto each drawer and mark with a washable fabric marker the spot where each screw will go. Using the tip of some sharp scissors, cut a tiny hole in each of those spots.


Working one drawer at a time, apply Mod Podge or similar glue to the drawer's surface. (I didn't realize until I'd started applying glue that my cat had eaten some of the brush! What a cuckoo kitty...)


Carefully apply fabric to the drawer and use a cloth to flatten any bubbles or wrinkles.


Let the glue and fabric dry. If you've removed your drawers from their cabinet, you don't need to do this, but in this case, I laid the cabinet on its side so that each drawer would dry independently and the edges of the fabric wouldn't get stuck together.


When dry, apply Mod Podge or similar glue to the top of the fabric.


Once again, allow to dry.


Before putting the hardware back on, insert each screw from the "back" side of the drawer, carefully finding the little holes you cut in the fabric. If necessary, hold the fabric in place with your finger while you help the screw pierce through.


Attach handles back on.


And, you're done!


I am so happy with this project! Total time: about 2 hours altogether, from ironing the fabric to screwing the last handle back on. Total cost: $3 for fabric and small amount of Mod Podge. The IKEA drawers were purchased for about $35 years ago and would have been dropped off at Goodwill or thrown out before long.

If you look too close, it's not perfect. If I did this again, I would add some of that spray to the edges to prevent fraying (what's that thing called?) and I might skip the layer of Mod Podge on top of the fabric. I think it helps seal the whole thing, but it also makes the fabric look "crusty" and lose its sheen. In any case, it looks way cooler than before and is totally usable. Tres Anthropologie, don't you think? I'm psyched.


Do you have beat up furniture that you've thought about revamping with fabric? What kind of prints or colors would you use? Tell me all about it!

Jenny, it looks fabulous! And I can't believe you only used a fat quarter's worth of fabric. Amazing! You did a great job matching up the prints, too. Most of the furniture we have is really old, a lot of things from my paternal grandmother or other family members, so I don't have anything I could really recover at the moment. Unless someone knows how I can re-cover the top of the plastic IKEA kid's table I left outside all summer, it is stained and scratched! I'm not sure anything would adhere to it, though. This really turned out beautifully, Jen!