Ikea Tarva Hack

Waaay back in April, my BFF's and I journeyed to Ohio on an IKEA pilgrimage and I had been planning a little "Ikea hack" ever since.

I bought an Ikea Tarva dresser with the intention of turning it into a grand hutch for our kitchen... but of course the practicality of hacking a giant hutch with no construction experience..... yeah, no.

After I stared at the boxes for a solid month... my dad and I put it together with a minimum of swearing.

The first thing we noticed, which you can see in the picture below, is that the drawers are ever-so-slightly wonky.  Like... the gap in the middle of the 2 sets of drawers are just off.



My dad, handyman extraordinaire, determines that this will ruin my whole project.  I am not deterred.

So we get to cutting out some trim to snazz the Tarva up.

Many hours later (like 3), things are looking good.  

 

We get the whole piece trimmed out, including the sides.  And miraculously, the trim seems to have magically evened everything out.  No weird gaps, it looks pretty perfect.

Miracles do happen!  Even IKEA miracles.

Four layers of stain, 3 layers of paint, and approximately 8 layers of polyurethane later... things were starting to get real.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!!  The only thing better than dreaming up an Ikea project is FINISHING it. 

It's not so much a "kitchen hutch" as I had planned... but it's actually holding overflow baking supplies, and I just loooove to kick my shoes off underneath it after a long day.  Which is really classy and totally Pinterest-worthy. 

Bam.  Nothing like a good transformation to make me want to do it all again!

Now... I can't understand why my husband doesn't want to make an Ikea trip and start on another project together.

I mean.... it looks pretty amazing, right?  We won't go into some of the "little tweaks" I want to make to it.