Ask me where my keys are. Go on. I know the answer. I know the answer every single second of every single day.
THEY’RE IN THE DRAWER!!!!
A year’s derailment through chaos and disorder - not always the fault of the apartment renovation. Apartments don’t have obvious foyers or dumping grounds and, previously, all these keep-on-your-person-things would get spread to 50 corners and more. My keys were daily victims. Our newly re-homed Ikea Expedit has solved it all. To perfect our laundry room storage, we attacked with white paint. But – to completely change our life – we pimped our Expedit and there’s no going back.
Expedit drawer inserts
One drawer each – our ‘magic drawers’ – keys, sunglasses, mail… everything. They have one home & I haven’t lost my iPod headphones since. From being the “Sorry I’m late” girl my entire life — this marks major progress in becoming Kate M’s new best friend: it’s my “I’m punctual for the duchess” drawer.
Expedit shoe inserts
We got two shoe dividers as well – and I think a third or fourth might be a good bet.
Painting Expedit: quick results vs perfection
It’s an “it’ll do” project – it’s meant to be functional, not examined, and we wanted the quickest route to finished. Neither sloppy nor OCD. Want to do an A- job painting Ikea because you’re impatient and don’t really care? Do it my way:
- CIL Naturaliving primer, 1x coat
- CIL Naturaliving semi-gloss paint… a lot
- Small brushes & minimal drying time.
In full sentences, that’s one dose of primer, then three coats of paint – with a fourth on the most visible bits (I’ll never let you look behind it as long as I live). Unlike the painting the kitchen cupboards, we allowed Expedit next to no drying time.
Primer?
Everyone else advises using oil-based primer, mine was no-VOC acrylic latex – it’s what we had. Durability? It works fine for our purposes – occasional and delicate use in the laundry room. I’ll touch up major disasters when I have a paintbrush out for something else, but I doubt it would last long in a busy living room or a kids’ room. Whether this is the result of using acrylic primer or denying it curing time – who’s to say.
Impatient repercussions:
Scraped paint off with the iron’s plug the first time I put it on the shelf – chose not to care. (Because if you’re sticking your head into the back of my iron shelf… I have other questions).
Durable solution:
We lined eight Expedit cubes and the top with the Ikea stuff, Rationell Variera, & that keeps all parties happy.
If Kate Middleton’s coming to dinner and you need to paint it properly:
There are far better tutorials for doing an outstanding job – the laminate, she’s a tricky temptress.
- Justine had similar feelings towards her black Lack – now it’s shiny, shiny white.
- Chris uses fancy paint and a foam roller. (I love the effect but am very attached to our VOC-free stuff).
- And Morgan used spray paint!
- Plus a collection of Apartment Therapy wisdom about painting Lack, Expedit… the whole gang.
Highly recommend all of the above and totally changing my tune – I love Expedit. And Ikea butcher block. And Groland. And Bekvam. Sweden – you should be extending citzenship by now…
Pin ItHey, you want a s'more? Some more of what?
Looks good!
You could try a coat of poly (spray painted or otherwise) on top of the semi-gloss to seal it.
Or you could just touch it up right before you list. That would be my choice at this point! Lol
Thanks! Doesn’t poly smell quite badly? I’d definitely do that if it was going somewhere more used-and-abused. Lazy route it is!
If you’re ever feeling inspired enough to take all your stuff out of it and pulling it out of the laundry room, you could try Acrylaq Safecoat. I think that’s the low-VOC stuff that YHL uses for their clear-coat.
This is one fantastic overhaul! The structure itself is so useful but I can totally relate to (shocking!) the desire to get rid of it. I finally expunged our last bit of hand-me-down stuff from IKEA. I still proudly own plenty of IKEA furniture, but just not that orangey “wood” foil covered MALM dresser. The best part of getting rid of that? I got it for free, and sold it for $20. Winning! (Do people still say that? Is Charlie Sheen still relevant?)
Ooh thanks for the brand name!! Far more likely to do it if it’s low-VOC. I had the orangey wood foil bed in university — but it was ANEBODA which I think is the absolute cheapest Ikea bed you can buy. The low, low price includes a choice of two special extras. Every night you can either A) concuss yourself or B) earn a black eye, both from the stubby and unexpected Poor Girl’s Headboard.
And hahahaha for the Craigslist Capitalism. Charlie, wherever he is, whatever he’s snorting, would be proud.
I had no idea how much people dislike Expedit!! It changed my life when I got rid of all of my hand me down furniture and made it all sleek and matching…
and I just realize as typing that—Expedit was an upgrade for me.
I will just go cry in my soup and be proud anyway!
It was for me as well!! And now that I’ve added some fancy bits & pieces – it’s a brand new love affair. I’m eating my words – really.
wow, this looks great! i didn’t even know about the inserts for the expedit – i have one in my kitchen (still the black-brown color…we’ll see for how long) that might benefit from these.
Thank you! The inserts are great. I think they’re pretty over-priced… one drawer set is over half the cost of a new unit…. but it’s made it about 100 times more useful to me. Worth my born-again punctuality, that’s for sure.