Twelve Mulberry Place: Dressing Up an Ikea Dresser

So this was the entrance to our apartment before. Plain, boring and that table is entirely too small. It had been bugging me FOREVER! I couldn't stand it.

It was always supposed to be something temporary, I just didn't know what exactly I wanted to put there. I searched and searched every thrift store, yard sale and craigslist and couldn't find anything that was the right size or shape. It was always one or the other. So of course the next logical move was Ikea. Something simple, inexpensive (I'm on a small budget here!) and ready to be hacked. I found this.

Poifect. Unfinished, so no sanding needed, simple shape, PERFECT size, ready to be dressed up and $79.99 I can deal. So then it was time to drive up to Northern VA for a little Ikea shopping trip with my friend Elyse. Okay, maybe not so little of a trip, driving almost 2 hours to a store takes some serious prepping. Elyse and I both made lists, searched the Ikea website and catalog over and over making sure we knew exactly what we were going to get because forgetting something was NOT an option. So off we went and we SCORED!

4 hours of Ikea shopping later, we were on our way home and ready to start building. Okay, maybe just I was ready to build, Elyse not so much. It took me about an hour and a half to build this bad boy, but that could have just been because I kept getting distracted by Bones. Love that show, and love that the wonderful boyfriend got me all the seasons on DVD for Christmas. Miller was no help what so ever. Then again he never really is.

I was doing great until it came to the drawers. They were NOT going in right and I was getting so frustrated until I realize, I had put the sliding bar thingies (technical swedish term) on upside down. OOPS! Now that it was a good and done, I placed it in it's new home and immediately fell in love.

It was so much better than that tiny little table. And wow, after looking at these pictures it seems as though you can see the touch ups on our front door. Awesome. My OCD is not going to like that. Anyways, the size was great, I loved the storage possibilities, however that unfinished pine was NOT doing it for me. I wasn't exactly sure exactly what I wanted to do with the dresser just yet, But I was 95% sure I wanted to stain the top and sides a dark color to tie in the console on the other wall and then possibly paint the drawers a fun stencil. So I looked around the apartment at the different stains we had and I chose a dark walnut and got to staining.

I'm still getting used to this whole blogging thing and forgot to take pictures of the staining process, but I just brushed on some stain and then wiped it off with an old rag. Here she blows all stained and pretty...

I stained the drawers because originally I was thinking about finding a great stencil and leaving part of the drawers stained. I looked online for some great stencils and found a nice scallop one. But at $50 something dollars, I decided I could make my own. I don't want to go into great detail about the stencil, but I got some plain stencil paper, took an exacto knife and made a scalloped stencil and began painting. I got one drawer in and wasn't feeling it.

I love the scallops but the design wasn't coming across exactly the way I wanted it to. So on to plan B. I painted all of the drawers blue. The paint was actually left over sample from painting our bedroom. The color is Sherwin-Williams Tranquil Aqua.

Yup. Already liking this a lot more. My only complaint about this dresser was that it was looking really flat. It needed some dimension to it. That is what I was attempting with the stencil, adding dimension. So instead I thought of some sort of border and something white to brighten it up. I'm not exactly sure my thought process on the design I settled with, I probably saw it somewhere on Pinterest or on the stencil websites I was searching, who knows. But I began taping it out with some regular ole painters tape.

Now for a crazy, wordy explanation. I measured 2 inches in from the edge and placed the tape to the left of the 2 inch mark. I then measured 1 inch to the right of the tape and then placed another strip of tape, creating a 1 inch gap between the two pieces of tape. I then repeated this on all 4 edges so it looked almost like a grid when I was done.

Okay that makes no sense, so instead here is a picture of what I'm talking about. Again, not so great at taking progress pictures so ignore the white paint. Let me tell you, it was all trial and error before I got it right. And I didn't fully get it until the last drawer. Urgh.

Now comes the REALLY confusing part. I wanted to make 1 inch square cutouts in the corners of the 1 in thick white border. So I used an exacto knife to cut the tape that was covering sections I wanted to be white and added tape to areas I wanted to keep blue. Here's what I mean...

The black lines indicate where to trim the tape. They are 1 inch sections. I then had to add a 1 inch square where I wanted the "cutout" part in the corners to be. This way that part with stay blue and the white border will have a step down of sorts in the corners.

Then comes the cutting part. I took an exacto knife and cut slowly and carefully making sure not to go too deep into the drawer.

Then I peeled away the tape and voila!

After all the crazy taping and cutting and measuring over and over and over again, I began painting and then waited for it to dry. Then came the reveal!

As for the knobs, I wanted something glam and settled on some mercury glass knobs. I found them at Anthropologie. They have a sort of floral shape which matches some other knobs I bought in Amsterdam when I was there 2 years ago. I like how they tie in with the other knobs around our apartment. They weren't exactly the cheapest knobs around at $8 a pop, but I loved them and was being too impatient to shop around anymore. I later have found some similar ones online for a little cheaper.