Tetris Chest of Drawers

I bought a set of drawers months ago from Ikea and spent ages deciding how to paint them. Every time I looked at them the shape reminded me of a game of tetris but I didn’t think all the bright colours would go in my living room. Then it hit me – why do I need to stick to the traditional colours and then this idea was born!

What you will need:

Ikea PS 2012 chest of drawers

acrylic paint (white, black and red) – I got mine from Poundland (link no longer available)

Pencil

Ruler

Step 1

Take all the handles off your chest of drawers

Step 2

Measure out your squares and draw them on your drawers. I had to make mine slightly more rectangular than square so that there wasn’t any gaps on the drawer. You can use the same pattern as me or make up your own. If you want to use mine then just split the length and height of the drawer by the number of squares I’ve used in that space.

Step 3

Paint your base coat colours on the squares until the front of your drawers are covered. I added white to the black to get the lighter grey colour and black to the red so that I had enough shades.

Step 4

Now for the tricky bit – doing the shading. For each of your base shades you need 3 colours to do the shading:

One very light one (used on the top side)

One not as light as the first but still lighter than your base coat (used on the left side)

One darker than the base coat (used on the bottom and right sides)

I painted all the tops of that certain base coat first and then added a tiny bit of black to made it darker for all the left hand sides, before adding even more to make the other two sides, making sure that you paint the corners at an angle so they all join up together evenly.

I started out trying to draw all the shading on before painting it but I got bored and realised that my paint brash width gave me the desired effect so I just used that.

Step 5

Paint a thin black line round the outside of your tetris shape blocks (not the individual squares) and use the rest of your black paint to cover the rest of the drawers and handles.

Step 6

Screw the handles back in, then step back and admire your handy work before putting all your junk back on it!

I use mine as a TV cabinet as my TV is mounted on the wall so it looks like it’s floating just above it and it’s great for hiding DVDs and the Xbox (which fits in the tall cupboard on the right)