An IKEA Hack Adds 2x the Storage to This Small Kitchen
If you have a small kitchen, you might often find yourself stuck for space. Once you’ve found enough room in your cabinets to store your dishes, glasses, and cookware — not to mention food — there might not be much space for anything else.
Enter: IKEA hacks. There are lots of ways that you can add storage to a tiny kitchen with IKEA hacks, and this recent one from DIY Instagrammer Sumi (@neukolln.now) caught my eye. Sumi, based in Berlin, showed how she combated her lack of storage with an IKEA MALM makeshift kitchen island.
Sumi explains that she attached an oiled oak countertop on top of the MALM dresser using brackets. They elevated the MALM using IKEA legs and then corresponding white baseboards “to make them invisible,” she says, adding that the MALM is slender enough under the countertop to allow room for two barstools.
Because the dresser is blank on the back, Sumi painted the backboard with blue acrylic lacquer to provide a pop of color in her kitchen, and she also painted all of the hardware required for the hack the same color.
On the front end of the island, Sumi made shelving out of precut wood panels from the hardware store — “cheap wood like birch,” she says — and attached the wood panels to the MALM with nuts and bolts and a shelving bracket.
Now, Sumi has more space to store her pots, pans, and cookbooks, while the added countertop acts as an extension of the regular kitchen counters and is a perfect place for chopping, dicing, and slicing.
If you’re inspired to re-create this simple project, IKEA has everything you need. Grab the MALM six-drawer dresser (Sumi chose the white colorway) and pick up a slat of wood for the countertop. The SÄLJAN countertop is a great option, and it’s available to buy in two sizes and in several different colors and effects, including oak/laminate, gray mineral/laminate, and black marble/laminate.
This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: An IKEA Hack Adds 2x the Storage to This Small Kitchen (Hint: It’s Not Cabinets!)
Further Reading
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