Thursday, June 6, 2013

Ikea furniture hack...

On Memorial Day, Anthony woke up with this brilliant idea of hacking some Ikea furniture to make covered litter boxes for the kitties (I guess he got tired of seeing exposed, open litter boxes, its contents, and the litter being tracked all over). Over breakfast armed with our smartphones, we found a site with hacked ikea furniture, and they had brilliant ideas on how we could accomplish this project. After much searching, we decided that the Stuva storage bench found in Children's Ikea worked best for what we had in mind.

We turned this...
into this!















Tools you will need:
- the usual tools you need to assemble Ikea furniture
- a jigsaw
- flexible rubber coating in a can (optional)
- spray paint (to cover up the whole you cut)
- face mask (if you use the flexible rubber coating)
- caulking (optional)

We opted to seal the cutout and the inside seams with the rubber sealant and caulk (along the inside seams) so that any accidents that may happen (the drawers are holding litter boxes after all) don't seep into the MDF and end up warping the panels.







We assembled the drawer as instructed, but before installing the final front piece, Anthony cut out the opening with a jigsaw. After the opening was cut and installed, we used the Rust-o-leum Leak Seal to seal the cut out opening, and Anthony liberally sprayed it inside the drawer along the seams and screw holes, to avoid any accidents. We left it for 24 hours to cure. The cutout was then spray painted, as was the not-so-pretty-when-dried rubber coating on the inside of the drawer. After spray painting, the seams along the joints inside the drawer were caulked to prevent any leakage through the seams (leave to cure for a few hours). Assemble the bench portion of the storage bench, and voila, you get this:


We chose to line the interior with pee pads, to make any mess cleanup easier, and we added a litter mat to trap as much of the litter as possible before the kitties leave the loo. I also added some Arm & Hammer baking soda that was meant for the fridge.

*knock on wood* So far, we have noticed a lot less litter tracking in the room (which happens to be my office space), and it's definitely a better sight to look at than exposed litter boxes.