The Detolf display cabinet from Ikea is great for collectors and despite its flaws it's a good deal for its price. However, with a couple of easy hacks it becomes an amazing display case. I've written previously about adding extra shelves to the Ikea Detolf display cabinet so if you haven't read that article check it out. This article is about dust proofing the Detolf.

I was surprised how dusty it got inside my Detolf cabinet. It was never open for longer than required to put something inside or get something out, yet dust kept on aggregating on all of the shelves inside. One day I saw a comment from a buddy of mine, Simon Demonik about using weather tape to dust proof a display case and I thought that's something I needed to do!

This was the end result...the tape is barely noticeable, which was exactly what I wanted...


So lets see what I did in more detail. I bought some white weather window and door tape from Bunnings. This was the 5mm type by Raven. The roll had two strips so I just split them up. I think there was 5m total length of tape, which was more than enough to do the whole cabinet.


I did a test fit on the top left side first. The gap between the door and the side was actually quite significant. No wonder dust was getting in! The weather tape completely covered up the gap.




From the side it didn't look the best but not terrible either I thought. I aligned the tape to the edge of the side glass.


Applied on each side, from most angles the weather tape is not even noticeable! I also applied tape across the top to cover the gap between the top of the door and the wooden top section of the cabinet. There was nothing to align the tape to along the top part so I tried to get as straight a line as possible along the bottom part of the top wood section.


Front view - looks great and importantly it will now be dust free!


I did have to get the door removed to apply the tape on the side of the hinges. I also found that the gap here was larger by about 1-2mm than the opposite side but adding bigger tape here would prevent the door from opening/closing so I left it with the tape I had. The gap was still significantly reduced.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the results and think this is a must do mod to any Detolf display cabinet, especially if you're serious about keeping your prized collection dust free!

-i