Stacked Ikea Rast Hack

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

Because these dresser units are so short, stack them up and make them look custom with this super easy Ikea Rast hack!

I honestly haven’t been this excited about a little project we’ve done in our house in a very long time.

Partly because it’s one of the first projects that have worked exactly how I wanted it to and partly because it’s for the closet in the girls’ shared room which just means baby girl Collins is really here and alive and home and I just can’t get over it sometimes.

Truthfully, the Rast nightstand is fine on its own, but I also love a good budget friendly DIY project and that’s precisely what this is.

If you want to turn your Rast into something super cute like we did, keep reading!

DIY Stacked Ikea Rast Hack

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• (2) IKEA Rast dressers
• Paint color of choice (We used Meet Cute from Clare)
• Paintable wallpaper
• Gold drawer pulls
• 3/4″ millwork trim
• Corner brace bracket

It’s totally up to you but you can either put together your Rast dresser first or paint all the pieces before you assemble.

I chose the latter, but because I’m such a gOoD bLoGGeR I forgot to take photos of me doing this. I blame it on the super cute bee bee who’s attached at the hip.

Well, nip, but you know what I mean. Annnnnnyway….

Once you paint it and assemble, then comes the fun part!

Add your paintable wallpaper

There are tons of options when it comes to paintable wallpaper, but I chose this one from the Scott Living line. It was the perfect mixture of modern and feminine.

The good thing about this paintable wallpaper is that the design comes with a “built in” fail safe for making sure the drawers all look the same.

The line down the middle of the design you can line up with the sides of the drawer.

It doesn’t really matter if the paper is straight on the edges because you’re going to be covering those up, but I just did a dry fit and then used the instructions on the wallpaper to apply it. SUPER EASY.

Cut your Rast

Since you’re going to be stacking your Ikea dresser, you’ll need to cut 3″ off one of the units.

My poor attempt at being a “graphic designer”, but you’ll be cutting the side pieces off which means you will not need the bottom kick plate.

A couple super simple cuts, and you’re well on your way.

Cut your 3/4″ millwork trim

Your next step is to cut all the pieces needed for the trim that will be going around the edge of the Ikea Rast drawers.

Since it was approximately 1.7 million degrees, we cut them all at once.

Using your nail gun, attach your 3/4″ millwork trim pieces the edges of your dresser.

Make sure if you have any of your wallpaper sticking out from the edges that you use a razor or scissors to cut it off so it’s not showing.

Using a spackle knife or your finger, apply wood filler where your nail holes are as well as where the seams meet up on the corners.

Wait for that to dry and sand it down.

While you’re waiting for the wood filler to dry, go ahead and put in your bottom Ikea Rast dresser and stack the other on top.

Take your second dresser and stack it on top of the other and make sure you can get the side edges to line up.

By the time you get it in place, your wood filler should be dry and ready to be sanded!

Paint your drawer fronts

After it’s all sanded, go ahead and paint all the drawer fronts.

I painted the entire drawer fronts already so once I added the wallpaper and millwork trim, all I really needed to do was paint the wallpaper and trim so it shouldn’t take you too long!

You can see up close how good this is about to look! YESSSSS.

Install Ikea Rast dresser

Before adding your drawers back, use brackets to attach the 2 units together.

The drawers in the Ikea Rast unit have these little plastic circle things that stop them from coming all the way out.

I originally wanted gold bar long pulls but I was just so in love with the way the drawer fronts looked that I didn’t want to add anything to hide them so we chose these pulls that sit on top of the drawer.

Because I had a TINY bit of the floral wallpaper that I used for the girls’ accent wall, I made a last minute decision to add it to the top of the dresser.

I originally wanted to add it to the drawers, but there wasn’t even enough for one so I made a pivot.

Make sure you anchor your unit to the wall. It’s still not as tall as me and I’m only 5’4″ but kids tend to pull harder than needed on drawers I’ve found and to keep it from tipping over and causing a serious injury it’s SUPER important to anchor it.

We stuck some super cute teency baby shoes that she’ll 99% never wear, but are cute to look at nonetheless.

Now, this project took me way more than one minute to complete, but if you’re into seeing things in fast motion, here is a quick video I threw together as I was working if you’re into that sort of thing:

I am SO happy with how this turned out and think it’s such a cute option to add storage space in an already tiny closet.

I think this Ikea hack could actually be used in any room and altered to fit the needs of your space.

Throw some wheels on it, don’t throw all the drawers back in and stick it in your dining room for a portable bar cart.

Don’t paint it, add some wood stain and stick it in your entryway for some extra storage space and a drop zone for keys and mail when you come in the house.

The possibilities are endless with this Ikea Rast dresser hack!