Ikea DIY Built In

My Ikea DIY Built In that I made with my family late 2022 is all that I dreamed it would be. So excited to finally reveal it! 

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I am excited to share the process and reveal of my living room Ikea DIY built-in from Ikea cabinets. 

I have been wanting to utilize a wall we have in our family room for a while now and when my aunt came into town, we took it on with my grandfather. 

Here are the steps and tips as I went through this process. 

Measure! Measure! – It is so important to measure and convert it to feet. The best way is to have a measurement conversion calculator on your phone. It does wonders. 

Use IKEA tools! – I was able to draw up my floorplan on the IKEA website and they shared with me exactly what I needed to buy. It was awesome. I then took the diagram and added it to my canva account and drew out the room. It really gave me a clear plan on how to execute.

I used IKEA cabinet and doors for this project. But I would honestly go for already built cabinets from Home Depot or Lowe’s. If you wanted to paint them, that is the better way to go. 

Build a base. To ensure that you want it to feel like a built in. You need to build a base for the units to sit on. The height should be 1-2 inches tall for the base. It will look like a real built-in if done correctly. 

Stick on handles – Because the cabinet doors were already painted and finished I decided to get stick on handles to avoid drilling holes myself. I’m not the best at it. 

Our TV was actually not centered – so vs having to take it down and put it back up. I decided to add a off centered accent wall. It tricks the eye so everything now seems centered. 

Let stick on Wallpaper be your best friend – We decided to go with wallpaper vs actually installing slat wall because I like to switch up my house a lot and I don’t like full on commitment. It looks great and gives you the same look as real wood paneling. 

Kept the built-in floating & open – Because this room is somewhat narrow, I felt that it would have looked too big or overwhelming if we got a full on build-in around the TV. I went for open shelves for the room would still look spacious. I still picked up so much storage still. 

I’m so excited about the built-in. It just completes the home somewhat lol. Now we need to do the dry bar lol. 

The intial before and after

XoXo,

Jessi Morgan

Shop the room HERE