Mix it up - That's the best.

I don't think you could stain yours to match since it's veneer, but you could paint it. Just rough up a little with some sandpaper first.

You cannot restain the veneer. I would suggest getting silver metallic paint. Prime your beech stuff and paint it with the silver color. The contrast of the ebony against the stainless look will be very sharp!

Check out ikeahacker over yonder in the friends side bar, lots of creative people have attacked their ikea furniture over there, and many documented the steps they took.....

Best advice I can give you is to wait until you have a ring on your finger, and then you can buy some real furniture.

Seriously, this is the best advice anywhere on this board right now.

Why not put them side by side? Put dark items, like black vases, in your shelves, and put light wood or white items in his shelves? A study of contrasts.

I used shelfpaper on my white ikea bookcase to give it a different front color.

Why do you want an entire apartment filled with matching IKEA? Leave it the way it is and start replacing things with something that has a little more quality and character.

It's "quandary"

Just keep them in different rooms

you could get plywood cut at home depot, paste it on and then stain it. it's tedious though, and i won't recommend doing that to all your mismatched pieces. maybe only the ones that you need them to be together. click my name for an example of how that's done.

I agree with Jackie - different rooms.

Or paint it. And work on replacing it, if you can afford to. (I mean, you can always sell off some of the nonmatching pieces and get stuff that matches, even if it's just new stuff from IKEA. I don't think it's fair for people to pick on you for having a lot of their stuff, because maybe it's the best you could afford and the nicest your place has ever looked. They don't know.)

I have this ongoing conflict with my fiance about What Color Cheap Bookcases Should Be (he likes black, black as his soul!, I hate fake wood-print melamine and say that one should get whatever blends into the walls best, often white - a bank of cheap white bookcases can still look nice on a white wall with a lot of books in it). So I feel your pain. :)

Id just paint it all the same or contrasting colors - prime it first, then paint away. if youy are worried about matching texture or dont want it to hev to be perfect , you could cracle paint it.. take some of the ' perfection' out of the ikea geometic look anyways

I agree with the comments to mix it up, but I did successfully take two IKEA beech tables, and make one half of each table beech & the other half a dark walnut stained finish (it was for an event -- hence the half&half design). It was a huge pain the the a$&. You'll need zip strip, a dark stain, polyurethane, loads of rags, a well vented space, and a WHOLE lot of patience. The process is pretty intuitive, but be wary using the zip strip & the stain -- the amount of of veneer varies from surface to surface on IKEA furniture. I wouldn't recommend doing this -- painting would be a lot easier.

melamine is a pretty hard/smooth surface, however, a nice coat of krylon (easy to make even coats) would do the trick. they make a spray for painting metals and plastics, That'd probably be the best. and, if it's too matte and not glossy enough, you can just go over it with a can of krylon gloss finisher. MAN that stuff make things shiny....

I agree with Mel. Try putting them together with contrasting accessories. In theory, it seems like that could work nicely--if it doesn't, you can always paint them.

I agree with Mel also. Especially if you can find some Beech accessories, it would look like you meant to do that the whole time. Even standard Ikea stuff can be kind of classy with some stylish ideas.

Since the beech is so much lighter, it will be much easier to repaint - but you'll never get it to match exactly. So I suggest you paint the various pieces lots of fun vibrant colors (Chinese red, apple green, turquoise, etc.) to contrast and put them in different rooms mixed up with the darker stuff.

Of course, if you ever break up your house will end up really tacky!

Ok - I have a beech finished bookcase, and want to paint them black. Do I need to use sandpaper and primer? Or will the primer be enough? Thanks!