The Most Brilliant IKEA Transformation Started with a Wooden Cutting Board

When life gives you an old, broken IKEA cutting board make … spoons? At least that’s what BuzzFeed writer Erin Chack decided to do. When her wooden IKEA cutting board broke in 2016, she saw something more than the splintered fragments most people would deem as trash. She saw promise, she saw hope, she saw a new project.

Erin saved both money and space by upcycling an old kitchen cutting board, and the results looks like they came straight out of Williams Sonoma. You might be tempted to think she’s a magical woodworking elf, but according to Chack, the project mostly took patience, skill, and an extensive tool kit.

Here’s how she did it: First, using a black marker, she outlined the general shape of a spoon in the cutting board. Then, using a hand saw, she cut the surrounding wood into small, rectangular pieces, which she broke off with a chisel. Chack used a box cutter to further whittle down the wood, then a gouge and a hook knife (both of which are typically used in wood carving) to scoop out the spoon shape.

Getting the spoons to look polished took even more work. Chack joked that it took her “a whole season of Sex & the City” to sand down the wood. Then for the final touch, she used white acrylic paint to decorate the handles.

If you’re hoping to recreate Chack’s masterpiece, you should know that the only power tool she used was a drill to make a small hole in the handles so she could hang up the spoons. Chack’s project is the definition of handcrafted.

Okay, so I admit it might be easier for most of us to just buy new wooden spoons if we need them. Still, Chack’s impressive feat of craftsmanship only goes to show that you don’t need a big budget to make your kitchen beautiful: All you need is a show to binge-watch and a handsaw, apparently.