Turn Ikea cabinets into a sideboard

This post may contain affiliated links.

There’s a first time for everything and I can now say that we’ve mastered an Ikea Hack! As you may all know by now, we live in a 1938 Miami house with roughly 1,300 sq feet; so space is very limited. I needed an area to store all my seasonal decor (because the mini garage is already cramped). I thought about finding a long and skinny sideboard to fit in our dining area, but couldn’t find one within our budget. In-comes-Ikea!

We bought three Eket cabinets and their birch underframe which are sold separately.

I found at Ikea the Eket cabinets with a depth of 9 7/8″. The only problem was that I needed more than one (three to be exact) and couldn’t take the idea of them seemed like individual modules. To remedy this situation I came with the idea of placing a wooden top over the cabinets to give them a sense of unity.

I wanted a piece of wood that would sort of grasp the three cabinets just like the top of a shoe box.

After discussing the project with my husband, we decided to built just that, and for this we bought at The Home Depot a Pressure Treated Lumber 2 in. x 12 in. x 8 ft. To start, we needed to hollow 1/2″ of this piece from the bottom part, which will allow it to perfectly sit on top of the cabinets without interfering with the door. We left a border of 3/4″ around the wood as you can see in the diagram above.

To start hollowing out the piece of lumber, my husband made a mold (or box) where the router would sit and that preserved the 3/4″ of the side borders. This box allowed him to move from side to side and upward.

After he finished working this area, he sanded the piece and cut the excess length to fit the area. We then stained the wood using Varathane Stain in Golden Oak.

The grain of this wood really added an additional level of texture to this cabinet, now a sideboard. The wood hurricane lantern adds the final touch. You can find similar ones here:

This top wood really fitted like a glove. Everything now looks like one piece and the color of the stain goes perfectly well with the rest of the space. To end up the look of the cabinets, I added some brass pulls from Target.

Now I can proudly say that we pulled an “Ikea Hack”! Have you upgraded the look of an Ikea piece?