IKEA RAST HACK…BEFORE AND AFTER

Hello!  I want to share my little IKEA hack. I was contacted by a local Hardware company asking me if I wanted to participate in a makeover contest. They would provide me with the dresser and the Hickory Hardware of my choice.  Because I have used and love the Hickory line and I am not one to turn down a challenge, I said "yes"!

BEFORE

Now, I KNOW that there are many great IKEA Rast hacks all over the internet and no matter what I did, it probably wasn't going to be crazy different from what the thousands of people before me had done, so I decided to NOT do any research and just stay true to the style I love and asked myself the question….what would I want to put in my house.  Because I LOVE a modern, Hollywood Glam look, that what I decided to shoot for.  I just didn't know how yet. 

My husband and son put the piece together for me.  It's SO NICE being done with our renovation projects and now Marc can help me out in my shop a bit more. I am sure he is super excited about that too (haha:)).

I really needed to see it put together before I could make plans and decide what I should do. 

You can see the top is not flush.  I personally think that made it look cheap so knew I wanted that trimmed to be flush with the top board. Because I was going for a very clean, modern look, I didn't want to add a top to this, but keep a symmetrical, almost "boxy" look, with inset drawers. 

Flipping the bottom skirt board 45 degrees so that from the front view, it would box in the drawers and look just like the top helped with this feel. 

You can see that the bottom board was turned and brought flush with the front.  I trimmed off the excess from the sides with the table saw (like I did the lip on the top). I also added a board in the back.  This not only gave me a place to add my feet/legs but also extra stability.

 Hopefully the below photos, seeing it more complete, will help with this explanation.  

Another thing I did to help make this hack look more professional and create a lot more overall stability to the piece was to remove the exposed metal screws and sink in my own wood screws so that I could fill in the holes for a nice, seamless, modern look.

At this point I still didn't really know what I was going to do for the feet, just that I wanted to do a "glam" sort of look.
While sitting around with the family Christmas day I was staring at a piece in my living room thinking to myself how much I love the hardware I had scored years ago and wish I could recreate that greek key pattern on a piece….then it hit me!  Why not figure out a way to do this to my IKEA hack!

I played around with scrap wood, just pin nailing it until I got the dimensions correct and the look I wanted. 

This was close, but not it...

Definitely not right….

Just right!  Now I had to cut new pieces, glue and screw!  I love this kind of tedious work.  Really, I do!

In this photo you can see that I added feet in the back.  I didn't get as fancy as I did in the front (ain't nobody got time for that) but they still look nice and make for a very solid base. 

She (it's a girl) sat like this for a week while I waited for my pretty hardware to arrive. 

 I have used this hardware from Hickory Hardware on a clients kitchen remodel before and fell in love with it.  I knew it was what I wanted for this piece and was worth the wait!

I had Vos glass cut me a piece of glass to fit the top and did a 'back painted' technique in the same color.  This definitely gives the piece more of the modern look I was going for!