Ikea Rast Hack Building Plans

I’m here today to share the building plans for our Ikea Rast Dresser Hack that we are using as nightstands in our bedroom.   Here’s a look at the finished nightstand and then I’ll show you how we transformed the basic Ikea Rast to get this look.

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First, we purchased all of the wood trim pieces we needed from Lowe’s.  Below you will find pictures of the pieces on the racks at Lowe’s.  The information for cuts and where we used the pieces are on each photo.

Wood  & Cuts for Ikea Rast Hack

 

 

 

 

Ikea Rast Hack Tutorial

The first thing we did was cut a notch in the top of the dresser corners to attach the molding.  As you can see, the wood cut easily with a utility knife.

This next part is probably the most difficult.  Cutting the molding.  You will need a miter saw to make these cuts.  Mark is pretty good at this, but even he had a little trouble with one side.  Wood filler is a wonderful thing and made it look perfect in the end!  Once the pieces were cut to fit the top, we used wood glue to attach them and some finish nails for extra support.  Here’s how it looks.

Once you have the molding attached, you can cut the top board to fit.  We overlapped the molding by about 1/4 inch all around because we liked the look.  But, you can cut your top board to the size you like.  As you can see in the above photo, there is a height difference between the top of the dresser and the molding.  To fill in this space, Mark used left over pieces of the trim used for the drawers and sides of the dresser.  He stacked a few, glued them together and placed them on the top – for added stability when attaching the new dresser top board. The top board was attached using wood glue and finish nails.

Next we framed out the dresser fronts and sides with the 3/8″ pine project board.  We just used wood glue to attach the cut pieces and secured them until the glue was dry.

 

There are two screws on each side of the Rast when you put it together.  I used wood filler and sanded to hide those before painting.

At the very bottom of the Rast is a solid board running across.  This board is set in.  Mark used a jig saw to cut out this piece – as shown above.  This was done because the trim piece going over this is also cut out.   Below is the paper template I used for the bottom decorative piece.  You can print this, cut out the template, trace around it on your  5″ x 2 ft. pine board, flip it over and trace the other side.

Once the pattern was traced onto the pine board, Mark again used a jig saw to cut this out.  Then I sanded it smooth.  To attach this piece to the bottom of the dresser, we again needed to build up the sides to attach it securely.  We used the extra pieces of wood from the drawer and side panels for this.  See below.

Then we attached the trim piece with wood glue and finish nails.  Below you can see the gap between the front piece and the original set in piece and why you need to fill in this gap.

Since I used one drawer pull instead of the two knobs that came with the Rast, I filled in the predrilled holes on each drawer with wood filler, sanded, and then Mark drilled the holes for the drawer pulls.   I purchased the pulls I used from Lowe’s.  They came in a set of six and were very reasonably priced.

Before painting, I sanded all the rough edges, used wood filler to fill in any gaps in the attached trim, and when dry, sanded those areas until smooth.  As a reminder, here is what the Ikea Rast looks like when assembled.

 

Ikea Rast Hack Painting & Finishing

And, here is our finished Ikea Rast Hack using these building plans.  I painted the piece with Maison Blanche Vintage Furniture Paint in Silver Mink and used a tiny bit of Miss Mustard Seed Antiquing Wax on the front trim pieces to provide a slight contrast.  I waxed the entire piece with Maison Blanche Clear Antique Wax.

I hope these plans are easy to follow.  Please feel free to ask any questions you have and I’ll try to help.

 

 

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