Woven Cane IKEA Hack Media Unit Upcycle!

Lately my Pinterest feed has been literally nothing but cane webbing furniture, so I decided to upcycle my 6 year old IKEA TV stand using cane webbing! My unit isn’t bad the way it is, but I’ve been in love with a certain West Elm media unit that is only going on sale in my dreams, so I wanted to spruce up my existing one to get the West Elm one off my mind! This is what my media unit looks like before:

Using some wood and cane webbing, the plan is to add two door fronts to cover the top drawers that are open, and then paint the whole thing a nice neutral cream colour that matches the room a bit better than the stark white. 

To complete this DIY you’ll need:

• Cane webbing 

• Wood

• Saw

• Wood glue

• Small finishing nails

• Small screws

• 4 small hinges

• 2 knobs

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First, I cut my wood pieces to the size of the opening on my unit ending up with 4 short pieces for the sides, and 4 long pieces for the top and bottom. Using wood glue and a 90 degree angle clamp, I glued the frame in place by attaching the tops and bottom wood pieces to the side pieces to make 2 drawer front frames. I finished these off with some simple finishing nails to keep them in place.

To attach the cane to the back of the frames, I used a wooden trim cut to the same size as my frame. First I cut the cane to size, then glued the cane to the frame with wood glue and then sandwiched the cane between the frame and the trim, using some short screws to keep it all in place. Nails would also work well here, but I ran out, so screws it is!

Now that the drawer fronts are assembled, I attached them to the unit by screwing them on to a hinge on the outside side piece. My original plan was to attach from the bottom so that the door could fold down, but because of the make of my media unit I had to do it on the side for it to properly open. If you’re trying this, you might want to explore your hinge options and go with whatever one fits your furniture best!

To attach the knob, I thought it looked best if I set it into the cane itself rather than in the wooden frame, so I used wood glue to glue on a small block of wood to the back of the cane. Then I attached these super affordable brass knobs through one of the holes in the webbing into the wood block. 

To finish it off I painted the entire unit and the door frames with a neutral cream chalk paint (I used the colour Pale Moon from Behr). Check out my completed cane webbing IKEA hack TV unit upcycle!

To see the full process make sure to check out the video below!