Turning an Ikea Spice Rack Into a Bookshelf

Ikea Spice Racks cost only €3 and make fantastic mini children’s book shelves. They are the absolute perfect size for children’s books and they look seriously cute when painted in bright colours.

I have seen many pictures on Pinterest over the last few years of these. There is so much inspiration out there if you are planning on doing up your kids bedroom or playroom. We wanted to make a little reading corner for the kids in the playroom. The other side of the room is filled with toys so this side of the room is more for them to chill out. We started working on this before Christmas but we ended up putting our Christmas Tree in the same spot so it put the project on hold for a while so we are not finished just yet.

This is something I have wanted to do for a good while now, so when my friend was going to Ikea before Christmas, I her to pick me up two.

I was surprised when she delivered the spice racks as they were smaller than I had pictured in my head and from looking at pictures on line. The the plus side it was less wood to paint, which is always a bonus!

First of all I put the shelves together. They come with screws, dowels and a mini tool for assembly. They only take about two minutes to put together which is amazing as I have no patience for these type of things and the instructions were surprisingly easy to follow.

I then gave them two coats of Fleetwood white undercoat primer. I am obsessed with painting things white. Feels like you are giving them a new lease of life.

 

I bought one Cuprinol Garden Shades paint tester pot in Beach Blue colour (In Woodies DIY) for only €1.99 and this was enough to paint both spice racks, giving them two generous coats. Tester paints are great for small projects like this as you save alot of money. The amount of times I have bought a tin of paint and it’s left sitting in the shed.

I was going to  paint half the shelves blue and leave the other half white but I think it looked a little too like a shelf you would find in a bathroom . I ended up painting both shelves completely blue.

 

And here’s how they turned out! I can’t take any credit for hanging them up the wall as I am useless at that. Yes we did get those Roald Dahl’s little books as part as Happy Meal’s In Mc Donalds. The kids were so disapointed that day-where’s my toy?

So here’s how our little reading corner looks at the moment. Also check out our new Pallet Seat below, I’ll be doing a blog post about that soon to show you how we made it. I saw ‘we’ because I didn’t make it at all my husband did and my dad painted it, but I coordinated the project so it wouldn’t have been done without me! So I’m totally taking some credit for it!

Let me know if you have any questions or if I have let any details out. This project is fairly addictive especially as it’s such a cheap one to do. Overall the two shelves and the paint cost me a total of €8. Not including the white primer as I already had that in the shed. Have you used Ikea Spice Racks to make bookshelves before? I’d love to see pictures, feel free to leave a link below.

Happy DIYing

Ali

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