Semi Custom with Semihandmade: IKEA Besta Upcycle
“This post is in partnership with Semihandmade because I love em & know you’ll love em too!”
If you've been hanging out with me for some time then you already know that before we bought a house I was working on a refresh for the living room, which then triggered our decision to covert the dining room to a study.
When my husband came back, he asked me the question I'd been asking myself for months — "do we need a dining room?"
From there, we sold the dining room table, put the dining chairs in storage, and began a massive purge to prepare for the transition.
The design plan was to keep as much of what we already owned and give them a proper upcycle to recreate the space. Two things we knew we wanted to keep were my old desk and our IKEA Besta sideboard.
A few coats of oil based black gloss paint transformed my old navy blue & gold desk into a brand new black & gold beauty...
...and now I could focus on the IKEA Besta sideboard. This upcycle, however, would call for a bit more than just a paint job.
Enter Semihandmade.
Semihandmade is known for their custom front options that work specifically with IKEA units — kitchen, bathroom, and media ...like my Besta.
The beauty of working with Semihandmade for this project was that we could preserve our Besta sideboard — which has been great for storage — while giving it a fresh new look that would fit the design. I wanted too darker, like the desk, without having to replace an, otherwise, perfectly good piece of furniture.
Semihandmade has a variety of door fronts available — styles & colors — so I could completely level up the vibe of our sideboard... and ultimately, the study.
I knew I wanted matte black door fronts to contrast the light walnut finish of the Besta — keep the warmth of the walnut, but with sleek & chic new fronts.
Tip: when it comes to cased goods, do not be afraid to mix & match the body with the fronts... if the design allows for it — it doesn't always have to look like one solid piece.
Semihandmade had 4 matte black choices that I narrowed it down to: quarter line, beaded, slab, and shaker (left to right).
The upgrade would be simple — unscrew & remove the door fronts that came with our original units and, using the same soft closing/push open hinges. The beauty of working with an IKEA unit is its innate ability to be customized with just a screwdriver & allen key.
While the location (and design) may have changed a touch — buying a house and all — the plan to upcycle the sideboard didn't change at all.
We decided to move the sideboard into the media room, which would align perfectly with the design...
Moody Hygge.
Available in 6 other colors, I went with the supernate shaker in black.
All 4 options were gorgeous but the shaker was my sweet spot between a modern yet classic upgrade... making it a timeless upgrade. The doors are available in different sizes, based on the Besta unit, so I had to make sure I chose the right one for mine.
After the move, it took a while to settled settled in but I wanted to quickly unbox the doors and... OMG... so pretty!
The installation was a simple weekend project. We removed the original doors and used the same hardware to install the new door fronts. Worst case scenario, all the installation hardware is available at IKEA, in case we lost any in the move... which we did.
I've lived with the doors for the past couple of months and they're so good! They open & close with ease — like they belonged there all along — and the two tone design creates the exact vibe I'd hoped for... better even. Paired with the acrylic legs I put on a few years back, it hardly looks like the simple IKEA sideboard we bought back in 2016.
The new doors also ended up being the perfect trial run for the new cabinets in our kitchen renovation.
Yep… our cabinets are from, you guesses it… Semihandmade… well sort of. You can read about my process of choosing our cabinets over on my new Emily Henderson blog post… all about cabinetry.
The final result?
Well you're gonna have to wait for the reveal of the media room for that... but you can watch the installation video for a peek at how this is an easy & transformative upgrade.
