An IKEA IVAR Cabinet Turns into a Designer-Like Brutalist Piece
The Project Took 6 Hours, $250, and Elbow Grease
After building the cabinet following IKEA’s instructions, Harper and her husband started placing the half-round spheres on the front doors to get an idea of how many they would need and the spacing between each one.
“If we did it again, we would use chalk lines to line up the spheres,” she explains. Instead, after getting the spacing right of the four rows with six half-rounds, they used wood glue and attached each one to the front doors, eyeballing them afterwards to guarantee they were in straight lines.
They continued this process on both of the cabinet’s sides, with three rows of six. (For those of you wanting to re-create this DIY, that’s 84 half-spheres total.)
The couple’s budget was $300, but they ended up only spending $250 — about an eighth of the price of similar brutalist-style cabinets that often retail for thousands of dollars. Plus, it was the perfect weekend DIY, as it took the couple roughly six hours from start to finish.
While it was a half-day DIY, a few things were more tedious than expected and required some elbow grease.
