Ikea Rast Hack

Today I'm going to share with you guys a low budget DIY Ikea hack! Who doesn't love a good Ikea hack right?? You guys know my love for Ikea and how much we love to add on to their affordable pieces. We needed decent size night stands badly.  I had bought these little Ikea Rast dressers with the goal in mind to beef them up and turn them into beautiful nightstands to go with our king bed. We needed larger scale night tables to not only make things feel more proportioned in here and more like a grown up's bed room, but also to have more storage for clothes and books.

I bought these little pine dressers when Ikea had their bedroom event on so I saved an additional 15% off on top of their already low price of $39.99.   For about a year all we did was add new knobs from Home Sense and they looked like this for a while.....

Kinda sad looking, but at least we had night stands

Nothing very spectacular, but I was just happy to just have some storage and a place to rest some lamps. So finally after a year of looking at them like this, we brought them into the garage and started to work on them.

Here is what it looked like after adding more trim to the dresser.

You can see how much more substantial it looks now just by using some simple tools and inexpensive materials to make them look more substantial.  So here is what we did; first, we trimmed out the fronts of the drawer using lattice strips. Lattice is great to use, because it's very inexpensive and light weight. We decided to miter the corners of the drawer fronts, but you don’t necessarily have to.  We used small finishing nails to attach them to the existing drawer fronts, you could also use Gorilla wood glue to attach them. Then we framed out the bottom of the dresser using 1×3" pine boards.  There is a small gap in the front of the bottom trim piece, but we didn’t mind it. You could add a piece of wood in there to fill it in if it bothers you.

Then for the top of the dresser we nailed down 1-1×6 in the center and 2-1×4’s on each side of the 1×6 straight down and into the existing dresser top.  We framed out the top boards with more lattice around the edges and mitered the corners together. After all the mew trim work was done I filled in all the nail holes and angled corners with wood filler.  After it dried I sanded it all down lightly and started to paint and stain.

I mix these colours together to get a warm wood tone,

The two toned look brought more character to this piece and highlighted the wood frame nicely.

Using my favorite stain combo of 1/2 Minwax Classic Grey and 1/2 Minwax Jacobean mixed together, I wiped that on and let it dry for 10 minutes and then wiped off any access.  I found the new pine boards we added didn’t stain as dark and evenly as the Ikea pine so I had to do some second coats and touch up jobs to create a more even look.  After the stain dried overnight I did a very light whitewash over the top of all the stained boards just to tone down the colour a tad, as I found it too dark. I whitewash using a mixture of 1 part white paint to 3/4 parts water and simply paint it on using an old paint brush then wiping off the excess using a wet paper towel.

I then applied two coats of Minwax Polycrylic in Clear Satin to all of the stained areas. The rest of the dresser got painted out in my go-to paint I use in my entire house, CIL door and trim paint in semi-gloss, which I buy at Home Depot in the gallons. I get it tinted in Simply White by Benjamin Moore. I know there are better paint products out there to paint furniture with, but I have used this product many times on furniture and it works great and never chips and not to mention its so much cheaper than furniture paint.   

Finally, we added new knobs to all of the existing holes. I always find beautiful and unique knobs at Home Sense here in Canada, if you are in the US try Home Goods! You can find them in multi packs too and for under $20!

Here are a few pics of the dresser in our room now that they are all done! I will say the drawers don't open as smoothly as you would want them to. They are not on smooth gliders, just wood gliding on wood, so they tend to not always close the easiest, but I'm used to it now, and it doesn't bother me. I actually plan to give these to our daughter some day soon and then we will get some even larger night stands for in here.

Hope you enjoyed this little Ikea Rast hack dresser makeover project as much as we did and feel inspired to pretty up your bedroom as well!

Thanks for stopping by friends!

Love,

Dale xo