A tale of an Ikea dresser

When we first moved into our house, we decided together that we would rather take our time and slowly accumulate quality pieces of furniture we truly loved, instead of filling our house with a bunch of stuff for the sake of filling empty space.  For the most part, we were pretty resistant to buying anything new (unless it is upholstered or a mattress, then absolutely), because we loved restoring old furniture so much.  So, we bought our mattress and couch from Ikea, but decided to wait for everything else.

We looked around for dressers, but found that they were waaaaaaay too big for our little bedroom.  Then, I saw this, and fell in love.  Isn't that so cool!?  It's an Ikea Rast dresser, that someone brilliant turned into knock-off campaign furniture.  At the time, we hadn't gotten our campaign dresser, so I was in love with this idea : )  Our need for storage felt urgent enough that we decided to make a temporary exception to our "let's wait and find it at goodwill or a garage sale" rule.  When we brought home our rast dressers, Jon put them together on either side of our bed.

It was the perfect solution for us in our room to give us storage and not use up a whole ton of space.  These little bitty dressers are prefect as night stands!  They sat like this for a few weeks, and meanwhile we found the campaign dressers and decided not to try that same look here.  Instead, we decided to paint these dressers solid navy, and give the knobs a little upgrade.

Here's how I started.  First, I started taking apart the dresser that Jon had worked so hard to build (assembling Ikea furniture is no joke!)

Then I pulled out all of the drawers.

And started painting!  We chose a glossy navy, and a trick I found is that it is MUCH easier to paint multiple thin layers than to try and get the paint to look good with a thick layer.

I was a little nervous when I started because the navy was coming out more like a little kid's room and less the dark sophisticated vibe, but it darkened considerably as it dried.

After the paint dried, we added on the pretty new brushed nickel knobs (they were a value pack at Home Depot.)

Isn't that a crazy change?!  We love how the glossy paint makes it look like a much fancier piece of furniture than it actually is : )

Here is the difference in our room now.

Not too bad for Ikea dressers, huh? : )  The curtains are 9x6 drop cloths that are also from Home Depot, and hung on rods from Target.  We received a bed frame as a wedding gift, and that is on it's way...our room is actually pretty close to being done!