DIY Ikea Hack: Wood-Wrapped Credenza

DIY Ikea Hack: Wood-Wrapped Credenza

In our Rumpus Room, we needed a space for storage and I’ve always liked the Expedits / now known as KALLAXes. KALLAXI? I am not sure what the plural would be.

Inspired by some IKEA Hacks, and pretty much stolen directly from Young House Love, we decided we wanted to wrap the KALLAXI (I’m going with KALLAXI) in stained wood. The process was pretty simple. One tip I’d recommend is to stain the wood before you add it to the KALLAX. That way you don’t have to worry about accidentally staining the KALLAX.

Step 1: Assemble your KALLAX.

Step 2: It’s a good idea to give the KALLAX a light sanding so that your wood will stick better. This really only applies if you’re going to glue the wood, which we did (in addition to nailing it).

Step 3: Apply some wood glue, and glue the pieces of wood to the top. It was cheaper for us to buy three pieces of wood, which gave us almost perfect coverage with about a 3/4″ overhang all the way around.

Step 4: Nail the wood pieces to the KALLAX.

Step 5: On the bottom you don’t need a middle piece, just the edges. Also, not pictured here is that we screwed some casters to the bottom. So ours are on wheels, which makes them really easy to move around.

After we were done, we put all our stuff in the KALLAXI. One of them has all my records and my record player, plus some various electronics. Once up against the wall, we noticed a bit of a problem.

All those chords! We decided right away that this wasn’t the look we wanted. We loved the way the records looked but all those exposed chords in the back looked like garbage. So we went to our local art supply and picked up some really large foam board that would fit the back. We had to cut it down a bit but it was a really easy process.

It was a cheap way to cover up all those chords, and that way you couldn’t see them from the front. And hey, check out that puppy on the left! That leash is no longer with us, she chewed right through it.

And with that, our KALLAXI are done. They are perfect in our Rumpus Room. When our painter was here, he was walking through the house at one point — remember, our house built in 1890 — and said, “Oh so this is the midcentury modern room.” The KALLAXI have that perfect midcentury look, specially with the wood panelling on the side.