Cubby Island: How To

The cutting table/cubby island is finished! Everyone loves a good Ikea Hack so I took lots of pictures so I could share how we made this. I love Ikea and to date have never had any missing parts or problems putting things together. (Knock on particle board laminate.)

Ingredients:

• 2 – Expedit shelving units from Ikea
• 1 – 36x80” hollow core luan door (bought ours at Lowe’s for $25)
• 4 – 3” heavy duty casters. 2 locking, 2 plain
• package of L-brackets
• package of straight joining brackets
• Paint & Primer for door

After assembling your two shelf units place them back to back and attach together with the flat joining brackets.

We used 4 total. I thought I’d bought a package of 6 and intended to put three on top and three on the bottom but because I only had 4, I only used 4. If the whole thing falls apart, I’ll let you know!

 

 

Attach the casters to the bottom corners. We put one locking caster on each end, diagonally from eachother. Now that it is all together I don’t think that was necessary because I have carpet and this thing is heavy and won’t roll away with out a lot of effort. If you are using this on a hard surface floor, locking casters might be a good thing.

 

While my husband was putting these parts together in the house I was outside painting the door. I used a KILZ primer because the door came with some lettering stamped on the ends that I didn’t want to bleed through the finish coat. I then used two coats of interior semi-gloss door and trim paint. Another option for finishing the door would be to glue laminate to it so it was like a kitchen counter. That was too fussy for us so we just went with paint. I’m going to be using my large rotary cutting mat on it most of the time anyway. I also considered covering it with batting and stapling a large piece of canvas (like a painters’ drop cloth) over it to make a large padded surface that would be good for pinning and light ironing. (The steam may warp the door over time.)

Once the casters were on the really heavy lifting began, literally. Because these shelves are not made from solid wood, we worried that the screws would pull out if too much sideways force was put on them. So we tipped the unit on its side and then lifted it and put stacks of books under the ends. Then we were able to leverage the entire piece and put it on the casters.

 

All that is left now is to attach the top to the shelves. Of course the one day I choose to paint something with latex paint the weather gets wet and humid. The door just would NOT dry! Finally it got dry enough to carefully carry into the house and we left it over night in the cooler air conditioned room and it finished drying.

This morning I finished it by attaching the door to the base with L-brackets. I debated for a while if I was going to have all the over hang at one end or to balance it equally. I finally decided on centering it because it looked better and gave work space on each end if I wanted to pull up a stool or high chair.

 

This is one solid piece of furniture! It will have to be completely disassembled if it ever needs to leave this room. Total cost was less than $200 and about a days worth of work. No heavy power tools needed. We did it all with a cordless drill/screwdriver and a rubber mallet.