Tutorial Tuesday- IKEA Rast Hack Sideboard

I’ve been looking for ages for a large sideboard to fill the space between my living room and dining room in my open floor-plan house.   Though I’ve been on the hunt for the 4+ years I’ve lived there, I never found anything that was quite right, and anything that was big enough to fill the space was over $600 at least.  

On pinterest I came across some ikea hacks, which led me to ikeahackers.net, where I stumbled upon this gem:


I loved the idea, though I do hate the color because it makes it look really industrial, and with the globe and the books the whole thing just feels like a middle school classroom.  So I did a little improvising and a lot of cursing and very little sleeping and over the course of the one week off I get all year, I made this:


Materials needed:
2 Ikea RAST 3-drawer chests ($34.99)
Wood for shelves, wine rack, side supports, and top shelf (I used 11 & ¾” x 12” boards for the in between shelves, 12” x 12” squares for the side supports, and a 6’x1’ board for the top)
Wine rack- 36”x1” dowel rods cut down to the length you need (I used 11 ¾” x 11 3/4'” but measure twice, cut once)
Lots and lots of screws
L-shaped shelf brackets
Straight brackets for side supports
Wood glue
Wood putty
Drawer handles
Stain (large container)
Polyurethane (I used a spray)

Tools needed:
Screwdriver
Drill
Hammer
Paintbrush and stain sponge/cloth
Tape Measure
Level
Saw (optional- I had the guys at Lowes cut mine for me)

First things first, I made a pilgrimage to Ikea in Cincinnati where I spent tons and tons of money on things I absolutely totally needed.  Like a wok.  Which I have yet to use.  I picked up two of the Rast dressers, which are $34.99 a piece, but incredibly basic and super ugly.  


Especially those wood knobs.  Yikes.   A follow up trip to Lowes netted me the remainder of my supplies.  Okay, I’ll be honest.  It took four trips to Lowes total.  The project kept evolving, and I am not great at doing math and needed to go back for more wood.  Twice.  All in all, I spent about $150 on this project, which is certainly a far cry from the $600 or $700 I would have spent at my Mecca, Pier 1.  Plus this way, I got to put in absolutely everything that I wanted.  Win win!

Once I put the Rast dressers together and put my top board down on top to get sort of an idea how it looked, I noted that it was really really short.
 

So I brainstormed some ideas on making it taller.  First, I considered just adding legs to the bottom, but that’s kind of expensive, so back to Lowes I went where I came up with the idea to add a shelf on top of the dressers.  I got wood for the side supports, headed back home, and installed first the spacer shelves between the two dressers and then the side supports.



For the side supports, all I did was screw a plain bracket into the back of the RAST and the back of the side support, then I used wood glue all along the edge where the two pieces meet.  Finally I drove screws through the top piece into the side supports.  This really, honestly, did not work that well.  It was pretty shaky, and if I had to do it again, I would drill holes in the bottom of the side support/top of the RAST and use small dowels to hold them together.  Those pocket screw things were too expensive and required too many tools I didn’t have access to, or else I would have gone with those, but alas, the problem gets solved in a later step.  

One thing I also did that I recommend but is very optional is take the bottom out of the upper lefthand drawer and bracket the two drawer fronts together on the inside. This made a double drawer for tall things, which has really come in handy for storage.

Then, I put wood putty in the screw holes on the front of the RAST where the drawer knobs were supposed to go and in the screw holes all over.   Then I attached some drawer handles that I got at Lowes.  I think they were only $1 a piece.  Okay, they’re pretty boring looking, and I may change them out later, or paint them, but for right now they work and are really functional.  

Here she is, all ready to stain:


You may notice that I’m staining this in my dining room on my nice hardwood floor without proper ventilation.  This was incredibly stupid, and I don’t recommend it.  Did I get stain on my floor?  Yes (got it off thankfully).  Did I spend 10 days high on stain fumes?  Yes.  That part isn’t so bad.  You may also notice that the wine rack isn’t in yet.  This comes later in the third phase of my project’s life… though let me say it would have gone a lot faster if I’d had all these ideas before I started.  

After a healthy amount of patting myself on the back for a job well done, it became apparent that this job was not, in fact, well done.  In that the top kind of leaned drastically one direction or the other.  Coupled with the fact that no matter how many home stores I went to, I could not find a wine rack to go on the shelf that I thought was decent looking.  Then I thought, hey put these problems together and make one big problem.  And that’s how my wine rack was born.

I googled “DIY Wine Rack” for a really long time and eventually came up with this design which encompasses a lot of different things that I saw.  In a nutshell, I made two rows that hold 5 bottles of wine each. The middle section is a little wider to hold large bottles of wine.  Everything I read said that you should not do this because true wine collectors do not have large bottles of wine for some snobbish reason that I don’t remember.  But since I am less an avid collector and more a passionate consumer, I saw no problem with having a larger area, but to each his own.  The space between the two dowels needs to be about 3.5” apart to hold your (regular sized) wine bottle.   
 

I screwed the upright dowel rods from the top only, because once the horizontal pieces are in, they will be set in place.  I probably should have also used wood glue, but I didn’t.  If there’s one thing you’re learning about me, it’s that I am impatient and like to cut corners. I screwed the first level to the shelf and the middle level to the upright dowel rods on each end.  Then I added stain and went to bed because it was really really really late, but I was a woman possessed.

The next day I did 3 coats of a spray glossy polyurethane.  This is important to seal and finish.  Then I sewed a runner, made some decorations, added an undercounter wine glass rack, and voila!  A very functional and nice-looking piece of furniture for a fraction of the cost!

Don't Be a Halloweenie and Other Terrible Jokes

Tis the season for holiday merriment, by which I mean needlessly scaring yourself with horror movies.  As if the actual real world wasn’t scary enough (hello, the economy?), most of you (and myself) have spent the last 30 days watching all means of scary movies from Halloween to Nightmare on Elm Street to Sex and the City 2.  Personally, I am currently involved in the epic 8 part miniseries “The Kennedys” which aired earlier this year on something reputable like “The Reelz Network” (you know it’s serious because it has a z right there where the s should be).  It’s unarguably terrifying.  That someone actually greenlighted this project, I mean.

Even though Scooby Doo taught us that all real-life haints are merely disguised adults with property rights disputes, there are several distinct horror villains.  In the type of gross generalization you can expect from this blog, every horror movie in the world falls into one of these categories, and every person in the world prefers just one over all the rest.  What does your horror movie choice say about you?  Read on.

Vampires

First, it is important to make the distinction between horror vampire movies (see: Dracula, Nosferatu) and vampire comedies (see: Dracula: Dead and Lovin’ it!, Twilight… seriously, those Twilight movies aren’t comedies? I mean, a vampire baby is literally eating Whiny Pasty alive in the recent preview.  Comedy gold.) Unique to this genre (thank god) is that people ACTUALLY THINK THEY ARE VAMPIRES.  That’s right, people truly believe themselves to be “mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures” (Wikipedia).  There’s even a whole subset of the plastic surgery/cosmetic dental industry devoted to vampiring people. Because, as it turns out, some people don’t have the hallmark fangs and pale skin typical of vampires.  Because, as it turns out, they aren’t actually vampires.  Because, as it turns out, vampires aren’t actually real.  Go figure.

Who likes vampire movies?  Sex freaks, mainly.  I mean, Dracula’s main move is biting the necks of strange women.  Hott…? All I’m saying is, people ACTUALLY WANT TO BANG VAMPIRES.  No one wants to do the nasty with zombies and yet they are just as undead.  Twilight has made somewhere around 85 bazillion dollars off these degenerates.  Because there are no bigger sex freaks than teenage girls.    


Ghosts and Things Unseen

Okay, I’ll give you that there’s very little that’s scarier than not seeing what’s attacking you (except for maybe the decision to cast Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy).  I get that.  But can I urge you, people of the blogosphere, to band together and stop going to movies where the villain is the house?  I mean, come.on.  “Our house is attacking us! There’s nothing more terrifying!” “I know, let’s move to a new house.” Roll credits.  People who like these movies tend to be boring and not have nearly enough real problems to worry about.

Witches

Witches are, by and large, very misunderstood.  Typically, witches have some sort of vendetta.  To break some new philosophical ground here: was the Wicked Witch really wicked?  I mean, you’d be mad too if a house fell on your sister, presuming you have a fair to good relationship with your sister.  The Blair Witch probably had some reason for her killing spree.  Maybe.  I don’t know.  My mom picked me up early from the slumber party.  Most fans of witch-based horror are old maids and widow ladies who told those meddling kids 500 times to stop eating their candy house and they just wanted to teach them a lesson.

Evil Demons

Little known facts that are completely true and not at all madeup: the Catholic church is responsible for funding over 99% of movies where the solution is exorcism by an ordained priest.  It was decided in the early 1970’s that the best way to get people back to the church, other than mass in English, was scaring them shitless with the power of the devil.   Like many plans of the Catholic church, this kind of backfired, because it turns out that you can engage the exorcism services of a priest without actually attending mass regularly.  And adults quickly noticed that it was mainly innocent little children who were getting possessed anyway, so really what was even the point?  Fans of this genre like simple hands off solutions to solve their problems.  If they can’t hire a priest, get a vial of holy water, and send their pea soup stains out to a good dry cleaner, then they will just watch Mean Girls for the thousandth time instead.

Good Old Fashioned Slashers

Based entirely on the premise that evil people can really be anywhere, but mainly lurking in closets, under beds, and especially old abandoned barns that you should definitely not enter, but for some reason you do anyway, slasher flicks (think: Halloween 1-80) are pretty great.  Though simplistic in nature (all it takes is a mask and a big knife and hello, you have a movie!), these movies prey on the fear we all share of being brutally murdered by an actual human person.  All I’m saying is, you’re walking alone at night in a dark parking garage.  You hear footsteps behind you.  “Ohhh no!!!  It’s a werewolf!!!” is not your first thought.   Fans of this genre are tough, know never ever to have sex if a crazed serial killer is on the loose, and okay maybe jumpy and a little paranoid that they saw movement outside their window after watching 6 hours of the AMC Halloween Marathon yesterday.  That didn’t happen to me of course, but to a very close friend…

And finally, Zombies.

I heard this week that Zombies are something like a billion dollar industry in our country.  Which I think is a sign that we’re finally back on track as a nation.  Praise be to Obama for making America #1 again!  Fans of this genre have both a strong respect for and a healthy fear of George Romero, and are united in their belief that zombies do not run.  If there were a zombie apocalypse, you would want these people with you because they are smart and resourceful and would know exactly what to do.  (i.e. stay in the house with the doors locked, not run out into the street panicking about zombies.)  Unfortunately, it seems that all these zombie movie fans must be the first to go because in a zombie movie it is painfully obvious that no one has actually ever seen a zombie movie.  “I bet if we just cut off his legs that will stop him!!”  No.  No, it won’t.

And sure there are other horror movie villains: mummies, werewolves, possessed vehicles, large dogs, socialism, etc.  But those are too boring to mention.  Mummies are no zombies.

Be safe out there tonight trick or treating because drivers are just supposed to keep an eye out for children in the roadway not full grown adults with no reason to still be begging door to door for candy.  And please remember that the threat of tampered candy is totally 100% real, always happens, and it’s best if you just drop your candy off at my house to be checked.  Text for the address.

No Turning Back Now

This is the moment you've all been waiting for. Your whole lives have likely been leading right up to this point. The point in which you, soon-to-be very loyal reader, experience this blog for the very first time. Take a minute to drink it all in because you'll never feel this way again.

"Where were you when Anna's blog launched?" your grandchildren will likely ask you someday, when they are visiting you in the nursing home for some school report on the Olden Days. "What is an iPhone, Grandpa?" is something else they will likely ask you, just slightly before they laugh themselves silly at the idea that we used to hold small electronic devices up to our ears to talk to each other. Probably they will press the button implanted behind their ear to buzz their friends to tell them to get a load of it. They will not believe it. And you will chuckle quietly to yourself as you go back to your tapioca pudding. Because even in 60 years, old people will still be eating tapioca pudding. Old people are crazy, man.

But look around you, folks. This is where you are when Anna's blog launched. Are you sitting at a coffee shop on your iPad because you are an ultra trendy hipster type? Right... me either. You've probably never even heard of the kind of iPad I have anyway. Are you in the presence of your friends and/or family members and are neglecting them to be on the ground floor of the blog that will change our generation forever? (If that is the case, you are right to do so. In 10 years, they will understand. Wait it out.) Are you sitting at your desk with your mouse hovering above the minimize button so just in case anyone walks by you can switch immediately back to your safety spreadsheet? Are you in your car? (Look up, idiot, the light is green and that honking is about you.) Are you naked? (Pics or it didn't happen.) Where you are now is where you will be when you tell this story over and over and over and over again. I hope for your sake, you're not on the john. "Yes, kids, I just sat there quietly shitting while the world changed."

What can you expect from me? I am a 20-something lawyer-by-day, avid crafter, occasional musician, urban farmer, aspirational painter, amateur arts critic, general self-proclaimed expert on the art of making things up as you go and hoping it turns out okay.

What can you expect from this blog? What a great question. To it, I say this: Excellence.