Ikea Rast Hack: Sophisticated Coastal Nightstand

Turn a plain Jane pine chest into a sophisticated coastal styled nightstand with this easy Ikea RAST hack, sponsored by Hickory Hardware.Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All opinions are truthful and my own. Read my full disclosure policy here.

I love when a project pushes me outside my comfort zone and also gets me moving to finish a long overdue room makeover.

When Hickory Hardware challenged me to participate in an IKEA RAST hack competition with other bloggers, I decided to finally get back to the business of decorating our guest bedroom. (My plans have changed a bit since I pulled together this mood board.)

I would love it if you’d vote for my Ikea RAST hack on the Hickory Hardware Facebook page from March 9-31. The top three winners get a hardware makeover for a room of their choice.

The RAST three-drawer dresser is a pretty simple piece, but it’s made of pine and has so much potential when you apply a little creativity, paint and power tool action to it.

Now, those power tools are where my limitations lie. Not that I’m afraid of them, and not that I can’t rock a drill or a jigsaw. But I don’t own anything beyond simple tools, and my experience with building is limited to basics.

But I have a good friend, Janelle from Simply Janelle Designs, who builds furniture and has an enviable workshop. And she also teaches women’s carpentry classes and her son and mine love playing together. We can put them in a room with a bin of Legos and they will play for hours. (She’s also a barn wood broker and knows the best places to find good junk!)

So, we planned a mommy-son play date and got to work on my Ikea RAST hack.

This was a pretty simple build because my friend, Janelle, is in the business of teaching women to rock power tools and to have the confidence to DIY. So, she wasn’t going to do this project for me. But it was great to have her expertise guiding me and access to her workshop. (I got to play around with a lot of tools, including a router, table saw and the nail gun, which is always my favorite.)

For my part, I made sure she didn’t have to cook that night by taking her a pan of my husband’s delicous homemade lasagna.

This post contains affiliate links, but I only recommend products I use and love. Read my full disclosure policy here.

For this project, I picked up a few supplies from Lowe’s, like this half-round round rope molding and four early American traditional wood table legs.

To create the sophisticated coastal style I was after, I chose satin nickel pendant pulls from Hickory Hardware. These remind me of jewelry and the hardware I see on some of the pricey furniture from Pottery Barn and Ballard Designs.

For the finish, I used Miss Mustard’s Seed Milk Paint in Eulalie’s Sky to match other pieces in the guest bedroom. The white accents on the rope trim were painted with DecoArt Americana Decor Chalky Finish in Everlasting.

Now let’s get to building.

The first step in this project was to attach the legs to the bottom of the chest. We did this by adding a 2X4 on each side on the bottom of the dresser’s base.

I predrilled holes, which I countersunk and later filled in with wood filler, and then added wood screws to attach the 2X4 pieces to the base.

Then, I predrilled holes for the feet and added them.

I knew that I wanted to dress up the top of the nightstand, as well. The solution was to add some scrap molding around the edges to create a faux tray top.

To eliminate a gap that would have existed on the top of the nightstand, we added a thin sheet of luan to bring it to level with the frame. It was secured with wood glue.

To create the faux tray top, I just used some scraps from Janelle’s workshop, cut to size, and secured with finish nails. We had to add another strip of wood to bring the front of the nightstand flush with the tray molding, which you can see in the photo above. We weren’t concerned about the gap because it would be covered with the rope trim molding, as you’ll see in the photo below.

I used wood glue and finish nails to attach the rope trim.

For the final step in the hack, I added another piece of wood at the bottom of the dresser to eliminate the toe kick. I don’t have a photo of this step, but Janelle used her table saw to rip a scrap of wood to the right depth to fit in the toe kick. (I totally would have done that part, but I was using the circular saw to cut some other materials.) To give it a finished look, I added another piece of rope trim to the base.

Because the RAST is unfinished pine, I didn’t have to prep the wood at all before painting it with the milk paint. I used three coats to get the color and coverage I was going for. (Since I was painting unfinished wood, I didn’t have to worry about the milk paint chipping.)

The rope trim was painted in two coats of Everlasting, the white from DecoArt’s Americana Chalky Finish line. To save my shoulder the chore of waxing and buffing, I used two coats of DecoArt Americana Decor Soft Touch varnish as my top coat.

I just love the contrast of the coastal aqua and the white.

And then there are those gorgeous pendant pulls from Hickory Hardware.

I should mention that I had to drill new holes for the pendant pulls so they would be centered on the drawers. I also replaced the screws that came with them with shorter #8-32 1/2-inch pan head screws and added a #8 flat washer to each so they would fit securely against the drawers.

I really love how this Ikea RAST hack nightstand looks in the guest bedroom. It definitely kicked me into gear to finally finish decorating the room! I can’t wait to show you the full room reveal very soon.

Don’t forget to vote for my sophisticated coastal nightstand Ikea RAST hack on the Hickory Hardware Facebook page, from March 9-31.