Ikea Hack: Tarva Dresser Turned Printers Console Style Buffet Table

 This project was one of those projects you want to do sooo bad, but have no desire to actually do it :) A few months ago I moved my office from our 3rd finished bedroom into the basement. Well, as much as I thought I would get anything done in the basement (lol), it didn't happen. So, I needed a place in a normal living area to access my daily/weekly items. But, alas, I had no such place. Every nook in my house is pretty much being used. So, I decided that the best thing to do would get more storage in my dining room by switching out my buffet table and knock-off crate and putting a buffet with drawers in it's place. Half the drawers would be used for dining stuff, the other half my office stuff and craft supplies for the kids. So, this was like last Fall I decided this. For Christmas I asked for assembled Tarva dressers from Ikea. "Assembled" being the the key word. Well, I got two of them...not assembled. So, there they sat in my front room since Christmas. That was until two days ago when I finally decided to put them together....

 ...and then I quickly called my mom and said next time I ask for something to be assembled as a gift, please do so :) lol. If you have put one of these together, I'm sure you know my pain. Now try putting two of them together. And not only that, I just put an Ikea couch together one day prior. I'm Ikea'd out, folks. Anyway. Enough of the complaining. I got this for free. So, assembling wasn't that bad...although I really would have paid someone $20 to do it for me ;)

Once they were assembled, the fun part finally came. It was time to transform them into something I would love for our house. These things are just so amazing and versatile; it's great. To start filled the holes, and painted the whole thing Swiss Coffee White by Behr. Then I knew I didn't want them as tall as they came, so I cut down all the legs to the height of the 1x4 pieces of wood I was going to put on the trim. I think they ended up being about 3.5" in height.

 You can see here what I mean by the height of the wood trim I was going to use. These are just plain pine boards.

 I went through about an hour debate with myself and then with my husband on what color to do the trim. If I should keep it white or stain it. I ultimately decided to add a little character to it by staining it. Plus, it would match the pulls perfectly. So, once they were all measured and stained, I used some wood glue and clamps to secure them to the legs. Doing the sides first, and then the front.

 Now for the pulls. I wanted to do a printer's cabinet type look, so I needed 4 pulls on each drawer, in two rows. I found these pulls at Hobby Lobby. I couldn't find enough at my store, even though I scouted them out for like 2 months. So, I finally ended up buying them all online from hobbylobby.com instead. Figuring that the shipping would probably be a lot less than the cost of my continually driving to their store in hopes they had stocked more :)

To do the pulls, I drew out a template on a piece of paper. I folded it in half, then in half again. I then measured in 6" from the outside side and put a fold there. That's the line where my pulls would go. Then where the vertical line met the horizontal lines, that's where the holes would go. You can see my marks and lines on the bottom paper to see how I did it. To do the other side of the drawers, I just flipped the paper over and used the holes that I made from using it on the other side.

 This template worked great!

 This is how the wood trim ended up looking also. Tied in great with the pulls! I used Dark Walnut by Minwax.

 And here they are together, all done! I was going to do three of these, because, let's face it...I need more storage. But, these are actually quite big and I think three would have been just too much for the space.

 If I knew I was only going to use two, I would have used the 6 drawer chest. That probably would have saved a lot of pain on the assembly, but since I was planning on doing three of them, I went with the separate chests. Plus, I guess, if I ever choose to move these and separate them now I can.

 The drawers are the perfect size for paper towels! I don't have a pantry or anywhere to store paper towels, so I'm so glad they fit in here! Plus, it fits plates and placemats perfectly too.

 I love the look of the printer style cabinets, it's just too bad that you can't really see this view when the table is normally where it's at. To take this picture, I had to move the table clear into the edge of the living room and sit under the table lol. It was quite the feat :)

 I was somewhat hopeful that I would have more room on the top to decorate with, but I actually just used the same items that were on the table here before. They are just spread out a little bit more.

As for the wood trim color choice? I am so glad I chose to stain it instead of keeping it white. The white would have been classic, but the brown ties into our table perfectly.

 The cost of doing these for me was minimal. Just about $50 for the pulls. I got them for $2 each at Hobby Lobby on sale. All the other supplies I had on hand, and the dressers, as I said before, were Christmas presents. If you had to get the dressers and pulls, it would be about $200 to do since the dressers are $79 each. Or you can buy the 6 drawer chest for a little cheaper.

Let me know if you have any more questions that I may not have clarified! You can check out my other Tarva hack by clicking here :)