DECOR DIY / learning to love what you got

This TV stand has bothered me since I moved in with my then-boyfriend-now-husband over three (!) years ago. It was one of those things that I thought we'd replace eventually but it was never a top priority so here we are, years later and the TV stand is still taunting me. The problem is that there's nothing really wrong with it. It's IKEA, but its not broken and while I don't like it, there's also nothing so offensive about it to justify throwing it out and spending money on a new one.

So what's a girl to do in a situation like this? I initially thought that I'd replace the sliding glass doors with plywood ones, but a little research quickly made it clear that that kind of IKEA hack was going to end up being time consuming and expensive. The next thought was to paint the glass, but we already have so many colourful pieces in the living room, that adding more seemed like overkill...

The solution? Wood-effect contact paper. Less than 8 euros worth of the stuff to be exact. I had the idea and figured that I'd see what they had on offer at the local hardware store, sort of convinced that it would be awful and that I'd have to go back to the drawing board. Suprisingly, it wasn't half bad... (in fact, I was so excited about trying it out that I did one of the doors before realising that I needed a before picture if I wanted to show a before/after).

Obviously, up close no one would ever mistake it for wood, but when you sit on the sofa, it actually looks fairly decent, and more importantly it hides the mess of cables, playstations etc. that are hiding behind the sliding doors. The faux wood texture made it really easy to apply and hides the odd tiny air bubble (not like the metallic gold that I also bought for another project, that shows every. tiny. mistake and bubble...) I'd still like to replace it at some point, but it's been given a stay of execution for now.