Ikea Rast Dresser Hack -turned into cute apothecary cabinet nighstand!

Happy Friday! I hope you aren't getting sick of seeing my master bedroom yet :) I have a few more projects in there and here's just one of them. I showed you the complete makeover last week, but then realized how badly I wanted new nightstands. Mainly for more storage space. We have a complete lack of storage in our house, and it's starting to show badly. So, I figured a good way to gain extra drawers of space in the bedroom would be to get bigger nightstands.

I'm also in the middle of redoing a room in my mom's house, so we went to Ikea and saw this smaller dresser for $35 and thought it would work perfectly in there. But then, when I started redoing it, I thought it would work even more perfectly in my bedroom :) Not to worry, I got another larger one to redo for her bedroom.

The dresser is called Rast. It's rather small, but perfect for a nightstand. And of course I couldn't leave it just bare bones :) And I can't paint it all white either lol. Well, I could, but then it would blend into the wall too much. Plus, I wanted to give it a little masculine look for my rather frilly bedroom.

To get this look, I put the outside of the dresser together first and then just painted it white.

Before assembling the drawers, I divided the drawer fronts into thirds, and then got our router and routed out two lines. This gave the illusion of having three small drawers instead of one big one.

Then I filled in the current holes with some wood filler.

Next was to finish out the drawers. I did a new technique that I'll show you next week on how to get this new wood looking old in just minutes. No sanding required this time...although I really do love my other technique also, but this one is a tad bit easier.

Next was getting the hardware on. To match the drawer pulls I bought, I stuck a slew of screws into some styrofoam and spray painted them.

To make sure the pulls were centered on each faux drawer, and to not lose my mind measuring each one, I did this little trick. I took a piece of paper and cut it to the size of the drawer (I had two separate sized drawers, the middle row is slightly smaller so I created a paper for that size also). I then folded the paper in half and then half again.I lined up the drawer pull on the folds so that it would be centered and marked where the screws would go.

Then I lined it up on the drawer, and used a pen to mark through the screw marks onto the drawer. Then when I took off the paper, I knew exactly where the pull was suppose to go. Easy :)

I got these pulls for $2 each at Hobby Lobby. I looked everywhere to find the perfect pulls. Even almost ordered some from China. But, I'm glad I stuck with these ones...they look wonderful :) ...and it helps that I don't have to wait 2 months to get them from China lol.

They really brought some dimension into my bedroom...and interest. And of course, a little masculinity :) I'm hoping the hubs appreciates that.

I was worried about losing the extra depth that my old nightstand had, but this made up for it in length. And now I have an empty drawer that I'm sure will get full of stuff real quickly :)

The price to redo one of these was $53. $35 for the dresser itself and $18 for the hardware. I had the paint and stain already on hand.

Now I just have to get myself to finish making the other nightstand :) It's been sitting in my garage disassembled for like 2 weeks now lol. That's life for ya.