I recently decided that our coffee table could use a little sprucing up… but being a 20€ Ikea table (seriously, I don’t know how we ever would have furnished our apartment without Ikea), I didn’t want to spend too much money on it.

Enter contact paper! It’s self-adhesive, comes in a ton of prints and colours, and is pretty inexpensive (I paid about 20€ for a few meters of it). It was also easy to work with, but an extra set of hands went a long way since you’re basically dealing with a giant sticker (thanks, Dad!).

Other than the contact paper, you need scissors, a sharp blade, a ruler, and a rubber puddy knife (or squeegee).

We trimmed the piece to be approximately the size of the table, with a couple of centimeters overhang on each side. Then, starting with a factory edge of the contact paper (to be sure it was perfectly straight), attached one side.

Then just slowly remove the backing, while pressing out any air bubbles with the rubber puddy knife.

Using the edge of the table as a guide, trim the excess on the other three sides with the blade.

It would have been fine to leave it like this, but I decided to do the sides of the table top as well.

The sides were done in the same way as the top (though a little easier to work with since the pieces were much smaller). The edges of this particular table have small bevels, so I ended up going back over each trimmed edge, and using the blade and ruler trimmed a little more of the contact paper away from the bevel. This made the trimmed edges look much more finished.

I’m so happy with the result! It looks like a brand new table!