Just $50 Later, This IKEA HEMNES Looks Like It’s Made of Solid Wood

ABOUT THIS BEFORE & AFTER

HOME TYPE: House

PROJECT TYPE: Furniture

STYLE: Bohemian

SKILL LEVEL: DIY

RENTAL FRIENDLY: Yes

There are lots of IKEA shoe cabinet upgrades that can transform a storage essential into a hallway showstopper. You can add pole wrap to the flat door fronts, swap out the hardware, or paint the piece, for example.

DIYer Claire Champion (@charnwoodtowers) calls the IKEA HEMNES shoe cabinet “a great blank canvas.” “I am a huge fan of the IKEA HEMNES shoe cabinet for its slimline design and ability to store multiple pairs of shoes and boots, but the simple white finish doesn’t work with my decor,” she adds.

Here’s how she transformed a plain white one to work with her hallway decor.

The HEMNES got a faux wood treatment.

“I was redecorating my hallway and wanted to update the storage to work with my Midwestern boho-style theme,” Claire says. “I’d seen people use this wood effect on beams and windowsills before, so when I saw a cabinet for sale online that I couldn’t afford to buy, I decided to dupe the piece with this paint effect.”

Claire created her faux wood look with paint, primer, Frenchic’s Browning Wax, and a wood pattern tool from Amazon. “It’s a straightforward process of priming, painting the undercoat, and then applying the browning wax, and then running the wood grain tool through the wax,” she says, adding that the wax was pretty forgiving, so if she made a mistake — it was her first time trying this method — she could smooth it out and start over.

For the base coat, she used Frenchic’s Crème de la Crème. 

A diamond detail around the edges completes the cabinet upgrade.

She also used the creamy white paint to create a pattern around the edges. “It’s a nice way of adding a personal touch,” she says.

Claire advises anyone who wants to try a similar wood grain look to seal the final design with a clear coat or wax because the paint plus wax “isn’t very robust on its own.” That said, she “love[s] the finished effect,” she says. “The piece fits in the space really well, and I think it really gives the effect of wood.”

Inspired? Submit your own project here.

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