IKEA Rast Dresser Hack

I love a challenge.

I love to create.

So a creative challenge is right up my alley.

And a creative challenge where everything is supplied compliments of sponsors, with the chance to win something, well heck yeah - I'm in!

I 'm anxious to show you all the details of this hack-redo-conversion, and what basically amounted to a total transformation, so all of the build details are included.

But first you.must.see.the.finished.hack.

Feast your eyeballs on this beauty........

Now pop those same eyeballs back into year head so you can see the before.  

Can you believe this apothecary chest started out just a solid pine no frill, put together yourself IKEA dresser.....

Yeah, well I'm about as amazed as you.  I said I like a challenge.

Pittsburgh Paints has a new trim, door and furniture paint that I was asked to try while also hacking an IKEA Rast Dresser with supplies from Hickory Hardware and our local Menards.

Hickory Hardware allowed me to pick out what I wanted with their compliments on their web site, and it was a tough decision.

My first inclination was that I wanted bin pulls for the drawers, but I decided that although I do love bin pulls I wanted this to be different, so I went with hardware that had an old world look.

Hinges, drawer pulls, door handles and a couple magnetic catches for the doors, and the chest pulled together very nicely if I do say so myself.

I received gift cards to Menards to purchase the Pittsburgh Paint and other supplies.

Those purchased supplies consisted of the paint, brushes, and two pine boards and I was pretty darn happy to shop at Menards since it's the home improvement store we have shopped for 30 years.

All three of our newly built homes were supplied by our local Menards, and I just gotta tell Mr. Menards.... in the internet blogging world of DIY, Menards is highly under represented.  It seems to always be about those other two competitors.

This new Trim,Door & Furniture paint from Pittsburgh has different prep and use instructions than a wall paint or any style boutique paint I have ever used.  The guy in the Menards paint department said they don't shake it on the paint shaker.  It's like pudding and needs a prime coat under.

The paint is pretty tough stuff.  It goes on thick with nary a brush mark.  It is oil based so I had to open the front door for ventilation.  The day I painted happened to be really humid outside where I started painting it, so I hauled it back in the house then proceeded to let all the air conditioning outside with the open door. 

My vision was to transform this into an Apothecary cabinet.  I sketched out my plans, checked stock on what we already had, and the man with the power tools and I headed to the garage to hammer and saw our way to IKEA Rast hack heaven.

The top drawer was removed and the front panel from that drawer was cut to become the interior shelf....waste not want not.

The remaining two drawers were notched out and a faux groove was cut to make it look like each drawer actually had two small drawers.

You'd almost never know there are not four small drawers on this.

The sides were framed out with some new pine, and grooves were cut right in to the Rast dresser to give it a bit of cottage charm once it was painted.

The new top was raised and trimmed with some pieces of cove we already had in the garage.

The added pine pieces on the sides beefed the whole thing up and brought the front out more so that the drawers would be recessed and the doors could be hung.

The shelf on the bottom was also made out of new pine, supplied by Menards.

But my favorite hack ingredient was the recycled dining room chair parts used for the legs.

You may remember those darn dining room chairs that caused me so much angst for a year till they were finished.

Two of the chairs were originally captains chairs that we removed the arms on, and that gave me four former arms to turn into long lean curvy dresser legs.

I took a cell phone pic right at the sellers house

Legs for the apothecary chest, instead of having bun feet like my original drawing.   

Crazy cool if any of you want to know how I feel about those legs.

I had to fill in the holes with some liquid goo that is similar to peanut butter, gets rock hard as it dries and was stinky enough to make me gag.  I made a note to buy new wood filler that didn't make me want to vomit.

Sand it and paint over it, and no one would be able to tell the legs use to be chair arms.

The top, bottom and inside shelf, as well as the drawer fronts were stained with a custom mix of stains from Pittsburgh Paints that we already had from projects around the house.

It was a stain cocktail, all mixed together till I got a brown color I liked.

The Pittsburgh Trim, Door and Furniture Paint I chose is Antique white.  I picked up two colors and decided when I got home which I would use.

This paint has a gloss to it that is hard to see in the other photos, but here is a close up after one coat. 

The glass for the doors was harvested from one of the 10,000 old windows we've accumulated in the shed, that I cut to fit and lettered with vinyl shelf liner.

The letters are applied mirror reverse so they are on the inside of the glass pane.

I think the Hickory Hardware I chose is the perfect compliment to the paint color and finished cabinet.

I printed out some small numbers on vinyl for each of the drawer pulls.  And in Bliss Ranch fashion, each marked drawer means something to me.

Herb, August 23rd

The typography includes the first letter of the first name from Brawns parents as well as from mine, and the numbers are the month and day they were born.

Or maybe the numbered drawers house a secret apothecary ingredient to mix up a magic elixir?

I'm thinking of storing all of our emergency medical supplies in the drawers, like band aids, ointments, tweezers, dye to remove gray hair, you know those sorts of things.

That four frame x-ray in the background happens to be of all the screws and nails holding my husbands elbow on. 

I've had more than one person ask if they can have this beauty, but I don't want to give it up, so I have to find a place to keep it.

I think this thing turned out pretty darn awesome.

There are 9 contenders in this contest, which include a few friends of mine.

I really like all the hacks, but even if this one wasn't mine I think it would still be my favorite.

***UPDATE*** This hacked IKEA Rast apothecary cabinet WON the contest! 
Thank you Hickory Hardware for such an awesome prize.