So, Ikea.  We love them.  Basically when we need a cheap date night out in Pittsburgh, it involves dollar ice cream cones and Swedish meatballs.  Window shopping or under-$20 spending is usually the name of the game when we’re there.

We also use Ikea Hackers as a great inspiration and, as most in the DIY blogosphere know, there was a flurry of Ikea RAST drawer chest hacks.  Being tired of the lame side table Bill had for a nightstand, I thought this would be the perfect low-budget project for us to start off with.

BandBBuildALife’s take on the popular Ikea RAST Hack

Drawing inspiration from a few pins I had found here and here, we decided to go for the lattice framed look.  Bill’s beautiful espresso colored dresser also had a similar look so we thought it would make the pieces look like they fit together, and even found very similar (and inexpensive!) drawer pulls to the ones on his Sears dresser.  To keep it from becoming too matchy matchy (and heavy in a room with all dark wood) we decided we’d stain the top to match, but paint the rest of it a nice, slightly creamy white.

We like to call her RASTafari.  Yes, we name the projects we do together.  Cute?  Or Just weird?  Let’s pretend it’s cute.

I’ll not bore you with the details of a full tutorial  (Check out Erin at A Charming Nest or Anna at Take The Side Street for their fantastic tutorial details).  Instead I’ll leave you with these images of the mess that took us entirely too many weekends in a freezing cold garage to finish.  I should note we did use materials from the ReStore as much as we could, and the sweet kick board was technically crown molding that we got there – whatever works!  In the end, it turned out beautiful and it was a lot of fun to get to work on a project like this together.

Linked up to: boogieboardcottage.blogspot.com;