Who has an old Ikea Mammut stool lying around the house?  I think many people love the Ikea children’s furniture but it can sometimes take quite a hammering from the kids and end up looking a bit tired and sad.

But it is possible to give it a second lease of life with a little bit of imagination and a touch of paint.

Disclosure: This product was sent to me for free for review purposes, all opinions and views are my own.  The post also contains affiliate links which I think you may find useful – any purchases made via these links provide a small commission to me at no extra cost to you. This helps me keep the blog up and running.

Upcycling Ikea Furniture (IKEA Mammut Stools)

In our house, we have some of the plastic Ikea Mammut stools which although being pretty durable had begun to look somewhat dog-eared and got pretty scratched and dirty looking.

I hate throwing things away and if possible I like to try to find ways of updating or recycling items.

I had some Everlong Mercury chalk paint (*please note* this has now been re-branded to Sarah Jayne Paints ) that I still wanted to try out so I decided to have a go at these stools.

Metallic Chalk Paint

I was quite excited to be using a silver metallic look chalk paint and was really curious as to how it would turn out.

As you can see in the photo above, the IKEA Mammut stools were pretty scratched, so I just sanded the really deep scratches to even them out and gave them a quick wipe-over.

Using a paintbrush, I added 3 thin layers of the silver chalk paint to get a really good coverage.  I allowed approximately half an hour between each layer.

On the bottom of the legs, I decided to use Everlong’s ‘Sofia’ and ‘Olive Branch‘ which were a really pretty dusky pink and olive green colour.  I did this freehand as it was easy to paint neatly up to the join without using masking tape.

I added a stamped flower design to the top of the stool using the same pink and olive coloured chalk paint.

Extra Protection

Mistakes To Avoid

I actually made a big mistake here as I had not allowed it to thoroughly dry so it ended up smudging through the silver.

The beauty of chalk paint is that it is really easy to correct if you do make a mistake, so I allowed it to completely dry, then lightly sanded the flowers flat and painted over it again with the silver.

I then put a light coat of varnish on top of the silver which I allowed to dry before re-stamping with the other colours.

Again I left it to dry overnight before adding another top layer of sealant.

The stamping was actually better the first time I did it, the second time I slipped a couple of times with the stamp but didn’t want to redo it a third time so I enlarged the flower – a bit splodgy I know (the important thing is that my daughter was happy enough with it but I may just redo it when I have a bit of spare time).

I love the silver finish that I have achieved with the chalk paint, so I decided to also paint an old clock that I found at the charity shop (I must say this project turned out fab 🙂 )—> How To Makeover An Old Plastic Clock Into Beautiful Modern Wall Art

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