Pinterest Pledge {craft--4 days late}

The tardiness of this craft wasn't entirely my fault. The changes I made required some extra parts. I bought the wrong ones and needed Jeff's help to find what I needed. Jeff has little, to no free time these days so there was a delay. Anyway, I attempted my first Ikea hack! This image on Pinterest was the inspiration.

Here's another Pinterest pin that has 16 great options as well. So much potential. I headed up to Atlanta to visit my friend Barbara and we stopped by Ikea to pick up the rast dresser.

See that price? Unreal. Jeff needs a nightstand (he said, "what's a nightstand? you mean the table by the bed?") and he also needs some more drawer space. The table he's currently using is an end table with a tiny drawer large enough to accommodate a few TV remotes. Jeff also loves unfinished wood furniture. The trouble is few places still sell unfinished wood furniture and if they do the prices are outrageous. The rast dresser is real wood but I wouldn't call it sturdy. For the price of $34.99 we can cope. I knew we were going to stain it rather than paint it because that's Jeff's preference. We chose Minwax Early American or American something, can't remember. I also bought six new drawer pulls at Lowe's. The stain and the pulls added another $30 to the cost of the dresser. First we drilled holes for the new pulls. Jeff wasn't crazy about them because the original dresser has 6 pulls only needing 6 holes. The pulls I bought needed two holes each. The measuring and drilling was an absolute pain in the rear but (ha!) it was worth it. We only did one drawer and then I made a template for the other two. I did the staining on two different days about 3 days apart due to weather. 

Staining isn't my favorite thing. It stinks and it's kind of unforgiving. If you mess up you have to sand it off and start over. If you try to put on another layer thinking that will help it ends up being darker than you wanted. I let it air out for another day and then started assembly. 

This was mid-assembly.

You can see the backing. It was nailed in with the cheapest nails on Earth. So this happened.

This picture is so grainy! Anyway, a chuck of the wood popped off but it's on the back so I moved on. Here it is assembled with one of the original knobs. 

And here's a shot of the final product that Jeff apparently finished last night. I'll try to post an updated picture by the actual bed with his lamp and everything. 

I think it's a great improvement from the original and Jeff seems pleased so I can't ask for more than that. If I attempt something like this again I'll be a little more organized and have everything ready at one time rather than 3 different trips to Lowe's. And I'll pay better attention to the weather report. It's been in the house for 3 days and it no longer stinks. Or maybe I'm just used to the smell by now.