Transform The Affordable IKEA GURSKEN Nightstand Into A Luxury Sideboard

When decorating your home, settling for a piece of furniture straight off the retail floor can certainly make life easier, but that's hardly the case for everyone. Sometimes, your home's dimensions may need more customization to get the fit and look that you're aiming for.

Though there are still a lot of pros and cons to buying home decor from IKEA, the brand remains one of the most popular go-to stores for homeowners. With an extensive catalog of affordable furniture pieces that leave room for endless customization, IKEA has woven its way into our homes and our DIY-loving hearts. Case in point, Tiktoker @interiorxlifestyle, shows us how she reworked several GURSKEN nightstands into a sideboard for her living room. As the nightstand comes without doors, the Tiktoker used the shelf from a second nightstand to create a door on the lower part of the furniture piece using a cabinet hinge and a door push opener. She then lined several of these finished pieces in a row to create her unique sideboard.

While no one can fault the modern and streamlined result of this hack, the idea of purchasing a whole new nightstand just to use a single shelf seemingly defeats the purpose of an economical and sustainable sideboard. Unlike the versatile, DIY-friendly KALLAX line, the GURSKEN line doesn't come with extra shelving options, making it impossible to buy the nightstand's inner shelf on its own.

To fully embrace the spirit of IKEA's customizable features, we suggest hacking this hack by using a 14x10 inch BILLY shelf as a door instead of buying a whole new nightstand. At $7 per piece, this BILLY shelf is an affordable workaround — if you don't mind a slight gap on the door, as its dimensions are 2 centimeters shorter than the nightstand's actual shelf. Otherwise, head over to your local home improvement store and have a piece of wood cut to the shelf's dimensions. Attach it to the base of the nightstand with a pair of Kafenda 90 Degree Folding Door Hinges or a similar product, and use a Redunest Magnetic Push Latches as a closing mechanism. Join your converted nightstands together to form your new sideboard.

This hack ultimately results in a two-tone sideboard, given the GURSKEN line's light beige color. Either keep its unique color combination as is, or paint your new sideboard any color of your choice, following this trick to painting IKEA furniture's difficult surfaces as a guide. Top it with a countertop for a seamless, finished look.

If GURSKEN's style doesn't appeal to you, other IKEA series could be transformed into a sideboard as well. Wall-mounted BESTA units make for great integrated sideboards, especially if you hide their legs behind a baseboard. The same goes with the EKET series — its narrow proportions are a better fit for smaller living spaces while still delivering a polished and uniform aesthetic. To truly make the sideboard your own, play around with different hardware, from the handles to the feet and the baseboards. Alternate between open units for displaying decorative items and closed units for hiding clutter from view.