IKEA Kallax Home Bar Hacks

As I’ve gotten a better feel for the space in my home and stepped my entertaining game up, I’ve found that my bar cart doesn’t quite cut it size-wise. I still love it and use it in many ways while hosting, but it isn’t large enough to hold all of my bottles, glasses, and related odds and ends.

So, not too long after moving into this house, I started hunting for a bar cabinet to fit my needs. The hunt was frustrating because the perfect piece did not seem to exist–at least, not in my price range. A Pinterest search revealed a number of IKEA DIY options that caught my eye and I decided to go a similar route to create the home bar cabinet I wanted at a price I could afford.

Now, I wouldn’t describe this as a cheap project but it certainly came in way under the cost of any comparable bar cabinet/side board I had priced in my search–especially to be customized for this room and my taste. The total for materials was about $200 and similarly sized and appointed units I found were over $400. This kind of project can easily be completed in an afternoon–especially if two people work together. I employed a number of hacks using auxillary products from Amazon and my local home improvement store to go from the basic IKEA Kallax shelf to this customized IKEA Kallax home bar cabinet. Here’s the breakdown of the IKEA Kallax home bar hacks that made up this project:

Materials

• Kallax 8-shelf Unit – $65
• 4 Kallax Door Inserts – $15 each
• 2 Kallax Drawer Inserts – $20 each
• Wood Grain Contact Paper – $11
• 4 Legs, painted white – $4 each
• Ring Pulls – $11
• Stemware Rack – $12

Tools

• Phillips Head Screwdriver
• Flat Head Screwdriver
• Scissors or Box Cutter
• Drill
• 3/32″ Drill Bit

Instructions

I first assembled the Kallax unit and drawer attachments per the included IKEA instruction booklet. One of my girlfriends helped me with the unit, which made it pretty quick and easy to do (about 30 minutes). From there, I attached legs I’d purchased from a home improvement store, using instructions included with them (20 minutes), installed the wine glass rack (10 minutes), and moved the unit into place in my “cocktail room”.

Next, I measured the doors of the cabinet and drawer inserts in order to cut pieces of contact paper to size for covering. Be sure to measure out enough paper to cover not just the faces of the doors but the edges too as these will be exposed when opening and closing the doors and drawers. Once covered, install the doors per the IKEA instruction booklet. The final touch was to replace the included knobs with these ring pulls I found on Amazon (2 minutes). The included knobs are silver, perfectly fine to use and can be spray painted any color you like but I preferred the look of the rings.

Accessories

Once in place, I filled the bar cabinet with all of the essentials (wine bottles fit perfectly on their sides in the cabinets) and styled it with decorative touches like a gold pineapple ice bucket, an acrylic tray, and this Vintage Cocktails book. You can shop my favorite home bar items below. What are your thoughts on this project? Thanks for reading!

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P.S. You should also check out:

• 20 Budget-Friendly Wines + Essential Tools
• 6 Easy Bottle Gift Upgrades
• Dining Room Reveal
• How to Make a Wine Cork Garland