Ikea Forhoja Kitchen Trolley Hack

Hello everyone, today I will be sharing my Ikea Forhoja Kitchen Trolley Hack. I completed this at the beginning of lockdown straight after I had finished the Washi Tape wall and the under stairs storage area. We bought the Forhoja Kitchen Trolley from Ikea while we were still living at Seaways. When we moved here it only just fit into the kitchen but it has given us some very much needed extra storage. Buying a trolley is one of the tips in my Small Kitchen Storage Ideas. It has given us somewhere to put the microwave (that was too big to fit on any of the counters) and we keep our veg, snacks, tea towels etc in the drawers and the baskets we’ve added.

Here is a picture of the trolley before. We purchased the baskets from Home Bargains and The wooden crate is also from Ikea. As much as it was useful it didn’t fit in with the kitchen decor at all (see the kitchen here). Plans for the trolley were – add some gold handles because I want to add more gold in the kitchen in general, add some grey to make it fit in with the rest of the kitchen but still keep some of the wood to tie in with the chopping boards on my counters. I’ve mentioned before that my kitchen is very monochromatic and modern and I want to add more natural materials where I can.

I mentioned at the beginning that we completed this during lockdown and we were trying to spend as little as possible so I used leftover Cuprinol paint in Urban Slate. This paint is meant for the garden so I wouldn’t say that I recommend it for this project although it worked well and I love the deep grey colour. If you want to do this for yourself I would recommend getting a proper furniture paint such as Frenchic that comes in many great colours and doesn’t need a primer. Whatever paint you use you need to give your trolley a good clean before you start painting, as the trolley is raw wood I didn’t sand or anything, I just painted after cleaning.

The trolley took two complete coats and then I went back and touched up any patchy bits with a third. As you can see from the picture I painted the sides, shelves and drawer fronts but kept the top unpainted. I should mention as well that the top of the Forhoja is usually longer on each end but we cut it down to fit in our kitchen.

The top of the trolley I stained using this Georgian medium oak wood dye. It’s a really gorgeous colour. We also used the dye to stain the wooden crate that lives on the trolley so that they matched. We already had this in the shed leftover from when we created our fireplace at Seaways.

For the handles I didn’t actually use handles at all! These gold monstera leaves pictured above were actually over the door hooks from B&M. These are the only things that I purchased new, so I made over this trolley for the grand total of £4! I removed the hook part (with lots of wiggling and perseverance with a pair of pliers) and then resprayed them gold (already owned in the shed) as some of the original gold came off when I was removing the hooks.

I then cut two inch long pieces of dowling (leftover from my DIY plate rack) and attempted to attach them to the drawers. This took a lot of trial error and failed attempts but eventually we got them secure by drilling a small pilot hole through the drawer front and the dowel and then screwing the dowel to the drawer from the inside. To fix the leaves to the dowel I then used my Gorilla glue clear. I stood my drawers up on their ends and added glue to the end of the dowel. I then carefully placed the leaves on top, ensuring they were straight and at the same angle on both drawers before leaving them to dry. This glue takes 24 hours to cure but then they are glued very securely.

The whole trolley makeover only took the day to do (and then overnight for the glue to dry) and we were able to put it back in place the next day. Here is the finished Ikea Forhoja Kitchen Trolley Hack.

I didn’t realise how much I loved dark grey and wood together until I completed this! It’s definitely a contender for my kitchen in my future forever home. I already loved this corner when I completed the washi tape wall but now I love it even more. This Ikea Forhoja Kitchen Trolley Hack was on the list of changes I wanted to make in our kitchen. There are only a couple of more things to buy to finish off the styling so hopefully I’ll be sharing the full kitchen soon.

Lianne x

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