IKEA Dresser Hack: Turn this Tarva Dresser into Restoration Hardware Dupe

Written By Christina Muscari

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Hey, friend… welcome back to the blog! And today is an exciting one because I completed my first ever IKEA hack. I’ll be showing you step by step how I turned this popular Tarva $249 IKEA dresser into a $3,000 Restoration Hardware Dresser dupe. 

This is actually the first time I’ve built IKEA furniture, and it wasn’t that bad. My son helped me out, and it took about 2 hours to knock out. But now that I’ve got it built, I’m going to be making some upgrades to get that high-end, modern look. We are going to try to give it an Oak wash of color, put trim on the drawers, modernize the feet, and give it some new hardware… so let’s get to it!

IKEA Tarva 6-drawer dresser comes with these dinky little wood pulls. We are upgrading that. I have these long bars that are going to look really similar to my inspiration piece. So to fill the original hardware holes, I used some DAP Plastic Wood Professional Wood Filler. This is becoming one of my favorite fillers recently because you can sand it in 15 minutes. HUGE WIN!

Sand Piece

After the wood filler dried, I sanded it back, and gave a good scuff sand to the whole piece just to prepare it for stain later. 


IKEA Dresser Hack Step 1: Get Trim on Drawers

Cut Trim

Adding trim to the drawers is going to give us that framed look from our inspiration piece, so I got some Pine Lattice at Home Depot that you can buy by the linear foot. 

To get the job done, I used my RYOBI 12 inch Miter Saw along with my RYOBI Miter Saw stand which made it really easy for me to measure my lattice just once and make all of my cuts quickly.

Note:

For the shorter side of the trim, using the ruler on my miter saw was the way to go rather than the guardrail. I measured out 8 ¾” and got those pieces cut.  

 All of my pieces are cut! That was pretty painless. Just in case you are tackling this IKEA dresser hack project, here are the exact measurements:

Long pieces from end to end: 29 ¼” at a 45° angle

Short pieces from end to end: 8 ¾” at a 45° angle 

This Pine Lattice was a little rough, so I did take to my sander to them to smooth them down. I started with a 120 sandpaper and finished it off with a 220.

Apply with Wood Glue

There are a couple of ways you could apply this trim to your piece. I decided to go with wood glue because I’m thinking that I’m going to want to refinish this piece again down the road. If you’re worried about it falling off, you can use some brade nails to attach the trim.

After placing the trim on the drawers, I used clamps to hold it in place while the glue dried. I have lots of clamps, so I was able to do multiple drawers at a time.  If you only had two clamps, you could just do one piece at a time and wait for it to dry and move it around. 

Wipe up glue

This wood glue is paintable, but you don't want to have big globs form, so take a rag to remove any excess before it dries.

Fill the Trim

The last thing you want to make sure to do is to fill the trim. In the space between where your trim meets up, you may have cracks. I filled mine in with some of the natural plastic wood and sanded it down after it dried.  


IKEA Dresser Hack Step 2: Modernize the Feet

I really wanted to modernize the feet of the Tarva Dresser to match my inspiration piece, so I marked off an angle on them that I’m going to cut. The feet do come off easily so it was easy to set up my saw again to cut my angles.

IKEA Dresser Hack Step 3: Paint Wash

Before getting into it, I did test out some colors to see which one matched my inspiration piece the best. I tested them out on the back of the drawers and tried out 3 Dixie Belle paint colors: Pop the Bubble, Country Chic, and Sandbar. 

Dixie Belle Chalk Mineral Paint (Sand Bar) was the winner. 

Paint wash to stain

So instead of using an actual stain for this piece, I decided to create a paint waste with the Dixie Belle Sandbar paint. I like that I don’t have to work with an oil-based, stinky stain. The paint was the right choice. 

I watered down the paint, and usually, I would paint it on a wipe it back right away, but I actually wanted to cover up the knots in the wood to make it look more like oak rather than pine. So I did thin out the paint, but I left it out full strength.

IKEA Dresser Hack Step 4: Hardware

Drill holes for new hardware

This is the most stressful part of a makeover for me. Haha. When I have to drill new holes for hardware, there's lots of math involved, but thankfully I have this little template to help. So I have this guide set up to drill my holes in trying to make them as level as possible. 

Pewter Spray

I have this long black hardware that matches my Restoration Hardware inspo piece, but we need to tweak the color just a bit.  I have some Rustoleum Antique Pewter Spray Paint, and I really love using this on hardware. It holds up really well. 

IKEA Dresser Hack Step 5: Top Coat

For the topcoat, I decided to go with General Finishes High Performance Flat. This is a water-based topcoat that I used on my kitchen table, and it’s held up really well for me. This dresser is going into my son’s room, so we’re going to protect this dresser from the crazy kids. 

I'm going to apply the topcoat on most of the flat surfaces with the Dixie Belle Blue Sponge. It's really great and applies topcoat really fast. If you use this sponge as well, just mist it a little bit to get it damp.

This topcoat dries in about 1-2 hours, and I used 3 coats on this piece


The Reveal

Yay! My first IKEA Dresser hack is done! I’m so impressed with how it turned out, and I really think that I got the look I was going for with my inspiration piece. 

The best part is that I paid a fraction of that $3,500 price tag. After all was said and done, I spent $460 on this project. AMAZING!

I really hope you loved this project as much as I did.

Check out the reveal and don’t forget that you can watch this tutorial step by step on my YouTube channel.

 
 
 
Christina Muscari
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