A Fullen Washstand Re-Vamp - Bathroom

Photo: IKEA.com

Materials: Fullen Washstand - Melamine

Description: We recently tiled our bathroom and fitted a shower bath but having a small bathroom, we were pretty much limited to the size of washstand we could fit in and the Ikea Fullen one had the perfect dimensions. It looked a bit cheap (and it was at only �20) and needed something doing with it.

We kept the housing as it was but took off the flimsy doors and a friend who works in a local kitchen company made me 2 thick bevelled edged black, gloss doors. We fitted those and bought new handles to match the other handles we had in the bathroom.


I then bought a couple of chrome radiator pipe covers and fitted them to the bottom of the legs on the washstand so they look like metal feet and I covered the internal thin shelves in a zebra print plastic. This not only protects the thin wood from rotting when returning bottles that have been used in the shower and bath but looks great too.

We then bought the Talleviken sink for �50 and used the mixer tap we took off the old sink we disposed of. We are really pleased with it and the whole unit cost �70 with a small added cost of new doors and handles.

~ L.D., Manchester, UK

Fullen on Fullen

Materials: Fullen

Description: The Fullen sink base cabinet is very low compared with the height of my sink, so I thought why not put two on top of each other?

I cut of the side panels on the reduced Fullen so they would fit under the normal Fullen. I drilled new holes for the assembly pins and put it together as normal. This part will be without doors so I left out the part with the hinges.

Then I cut a new hole for the drain pipe in the top panel of the normal Fullen with a jigsaw and put the shortened Fullen version on top and fixed it with some small screws.

I followed the rest of the instructions and fitted the combo with doors, back panels and legs.

~ Jens Kl�ve, Copenhagen

Zigzag Fullen Bar

Materials: Fullen Sink Cabinet, Metrik Handles

Description: We have a nook in our apartment that's too small to fit a bar cabinet. My husband and I are classic cocktail fans and we needed a place to store some of our bottles and a place to display our tiki glasses. The Fullen sink cabinet was small enough to fit in the space.

1. The legs were grey plastic which looked cheap so I painted them with Martha Stewart Polished Silver Metallic Paint.

2. I got my hardware store to cut a board into a 23" x 15.5" rectangle for the top, which I painted white and topped with a coat of clear acrylic.

3. I attached the top to the base with contact cement.

4. The chevron pattern was made from wood grain contact paper. I drew one zigzag onto the Fullen box and cut that out as my template to trace onto the contact paper. I did one door at a time, but I wish my contact paper had been wide enough to go all the way across so that it wasn't so difficult to match up the doors.

5. I attached the doors to the cabinet and used an Xacto knife to make the pattern on the two doors match.

5. Drilled holes to attach what I think are Metrik handles.

~ Heather Sherrod, Houston, Texas

Bekvam + Fullen Solve 3 Problems

Materials: Bekvam, Fullen, Ekby Valter, Saw, Drill, Rotozip

Description: My family and I recently moved to a new apartment. We brought with us a 3 year old Bekvam kitchen cart that simply did not work for our new kitchen. Rather than sell or throw away the Bekvam, I decided to make use of the wood and hardware.

Our bathroom had a sink mounted on the wall with no storage underneath. This was a problem for us, so I decided to go out and buy a new Fullen cabinet. Fullen's do not have tops, but the top of the Bekvam was just the right size. Using my Rotozip tool, I cut a large "U" shape out of the Bekvam top, sanded it down a bit and attached it to the Fullen using a couple of angle brackets. I finished it off by sealing the gap between the wood and the sink with white silicon.

There's an odd gap in our kitchen between a couple of built in closets/cabinets. It turned out that the two Bekvam shelves would fill that gap perfectly. Using a few mending plates, I attached the two shelves together at the bottom and then attached them to two new Ekby Valter angle brackets. After mounting them on the wall, we had a new home for our microwave.

I was left with the Bekvam legs, part of the top and the apron. Using my circular saw, I cut the remainder of the top into two rectangles, which became the new top and shelf. After trimming the Bekvam's apron pieces down to size, I attached them to the new Bekvam top using the original hardware and reattached the legs (which were also shortened by 6 inches). Using a band saw, I cut rectangular notches out of each corner of the new Bekvam shelf, stuck four old wooden dowels in the existing holes in the legs and rested the new shelf on top. We now had a new end table and cat perch.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results. I'll probably end up painting the table, but for now, it's fine as it is.

~ Doug