Ikea Hack Nightstand
One thing I love about living in Marietta is that we are a quick 20 minute drive, door to door, to Ikea in Atlanta. I'm pretty sure we made a weekly run to Ikea when we moved here. I remember the first time that we experienced Ikea. We went down to Ikea on Halloween night (this was before we had kids) and spent at least 3 hours there! We ate dinner, shopped, fought, sought counseling and ended the date with a cinnamon roll. We almost always end up fighting by the time we enter the warehouse portion of the store. However, we now pretty much know what we want when we go, so counseling isn't always needed. I bet everyone has a room in their house that is the last place to decorate or put together. For me, it has always been our bedroom. I have yet to really put together a master bedroom. Even when we lived in our dream home, the bedroom wasn't complete. We had minimal furniture and few decor pieces. It mostly just about being functional. I don't know why that is. Maybe I know most people that come to my house, aren't spending time in my bedroom. But regardless, our bedroom is a place that I want to feel comfortable and relaxed. It's a place to go after surviving each day.
When we moved here, we sold, gave away, got rid of almost 75% of our stuff. We completely downsized. Our last house was nearly 5000 sq feet and our rental is 1850 sq feet. We sold our king size bed and now use our guest queen bed. We assumed our rental would have small bedrooms like most homes built between 1940-1970, however, we totally scored. The owners of our rental added a master suite on to the back of the house. We could have totally kept our king bed. Sigh.
Given that all we had was a queen mattress set for our bedroom, we knew we needed some furniture. After ordering a metal bed frame and upholstered headboard from Wayfair, the next thing to buy were nightstands. The only problem was that we didn't have a lot of money to spend. So what do you do when you have a need for furniture + a lack of money? You go to Ikea. After spending some time researching Pinterest, I decided that we should do an Ikea hack on the RAST chest. I found inspiration here. This chest has 3 drawers and is only...wait for it... $35!
After purchasing and persuading my husband to put the chests together (I like to make him think I am incapable of assembling Ikea furniture), we got to work painting and staining. (You will have to forgive me but I neglected to take any process pictures for you.) We had leftover white paint and stain from other projects. We stained the sides and top of the chest Minwax Mission Oak and painted the drawer fronts white. Then, we bought new hardware from Home Depot. I believe we spent $36 total on hardware. So each nightstand cost us about $55 each! Not too shabby!
I am really in love with the look of these. My only complaint is that they are a little short. My inspiration link built them up a bit, but my husband didn't want to have to do that. The drawers are not deep which works well for nightstands.
Our current master bedroom is definitely further along than our last one yet we still need to hang pictures! As you can see, I still have lots of work to do in this room to make it more cozy but at least I have nightstands ;-) Are you dreaming up any Ikea hacks?