I’m really excited to introduce you to my bestie Lara today! She even made a special appearance in a Five On Friday post last month 😉 She’s pretty fabulous and I know you’ll love her.
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Hi guys! My name is Lara Becar, and I’m over at The New World Adventure. In the spirit of Britt’s new baby, today I’m talking about the nursery I’m working on for the little baby boy coming to my family around the first of the year! I’ve talked in my past posts about really throwing myself into decorating the nursery, making everything is just perfect. I learned that there are a few ways you can do this! You can buy everything (and guys, you don’t want to see the spreadsheet I have going right now of things we have left to buy and how much it costs. It makes my bank account cry.) ORRRR you can make it all. Me being the picky person I am, forced my husband to take the make it all route. That’s not to say that I haven’t been helping, because I HAVE.
Anyways. So, I had in mind this set of drawers changing table for the nursery. Our nursery is child-centered rather than adult-centered, meaning, most everything is going to be on the level of a small crawling boy so that he can access all he wants (within reason and safety of course). The set of drawers were a challenge. I found plans for this particular set that I really did love. But then in reality, when you look at putting it together, it called for 100+ screws, and you must know how I feel about screws. So we ditched that plan and I turned to my trusty IKEA for help. I’ve got such a love/hate relationship with IKEA. On the one hand, things are so easy to put together. SO easy. And you could tell people “I did it myself!” which is almost true. And for the most part, their stuff looks pretty nice until you try to pull it around an impossible corner and you realize that oh my gosh, this piece of furniture is not made out of wood at all, it’s like saw dust that has been glued together…. and everything comes falling apart. Not exactly what you want in your nursery. But let me tell you, I found a gem. The Tarva series from IKEA is made out of real wood. REAL WOOD. Not stuff that was wood at one point until it fell into a blender…. it’s actual wood. Now here’s the catch, which you can look at from two ways…. It’s kind of boring. It’s not finished at all. Apparently this is really Scandinavian…? So if that’s your taste, then great. But I believe in my heart that IKEA knew that somewhere in the world is a group of people who want to make furniture their own without actually having to cut the wood out. This was for ME. So I gathered inspiration from all around the internet.
No really, if you’re really free on time sometime, google “Tarva Hacks”. People have done all kinds of things with this plain dresser. It’s inspiring! I wanted something that will age well (meaning, nothing neon green…) and something that we could use in other rooms of the house if we ever wanted to. I’m drawn to natural woods, and neutral tones. We still had a lot of stain left over from baby boy’s bed (here, here) and the recliner in his room is grey, so I decided to pull those two colors together to make something NEAT.
Our back patio has turned into a workshop for the last few months. I’m excited for the projects to be done so we can have it back to normal and not covered in cardboard and paint splatters. While husband worked outside, I got to work inside on the drawers. The Tarva comes with knobs for pulling, one on each side of the drawer, but I wanted something easier for little hands to grab, and in the middle, to balance the force of pulling without needing little arms to stretch wide enough to grab both nobs. HOWEVER. The Tarva ALSO came with holes drilled for what the intended. So it was up to me to stay inside and fill the holes with glue.
But I ran into a problem. While the glue went in just fine, filled the hole just fine (see right), the cardboard stopping the glue from leaking out and spreading all over the front of the drawer (read: the side you want to look nice), got glued down, leaving a small patch of cardboard there. But a few minutes of sanding got rid of it, and when the stain was applied, you didn’t even see it.
Checking back in on Joe.
I love this stain so much for how it shows the grain of the wood so brightly underneath. It gives it a really kinda rustic look without being “OMG RUSTIC WOOD!” look. Not super my taste.
Once we had the stain on, it was time to coat it in polyurithane. And let me tell you what a blast it has been to do that. One coat takes two hours to dry, and each side needs three coats. So, each piece of wood needs in total SIX COATS. Six coats, two hours each…. that’s a 12 hour task, add to that the final dry time of 24 hours before it’s entirely safe to bring inside. We were able to cut back on a lot of that though. A lot of parts of the furniture didn’t need coats on both sides. And many only needed two coats! The inside of the drawers are coated to prevent clothes from rubbing on the stain and getting dirty. The top board of the set of drawers is coated three times because I really wanted it to super shine. And I think it turned out beautifully.
NOW learn from our mistakes. One might think “Oh, you can just lay the boards on cardboard while the polyurithane dries. This is FALSE. For some reason, the stuff drips down under the boards and cements it all lovely straight onto the cardboard. You walk away with something like this.
Fortunately with a bit of sanding and a few more coats of that stuff, it looks fine. But never again.
Now, there are a few pieces of this furniture which are going grey. We picked a grey called “Chicago Fog”. It’s a light grey with warm undertones, and I think it’s just stunning.
The paint and primer combo was by far the easiest part of treating the wood for this project. One coat looked just fine, I did three because I’m paranoid…. with one hour dry time.
Ok so the most stressful part by far was cutting, painting, and attaching the molding I insisted on having on the drawers. I read a few reviews online about the Tarva, and people complained about the drawers not lining up perfectly, and how attaching molding makes it look a bit better. So we cut it, pained it the same color as the grey on the side boards, and glued it on. When you’re efficient (read: lazy) you don’t go to the store to buy clamps so you use old boards and books and heavy things to hold the molding flat and keep it from popping up from the slight warping it had. In the end I think it turned out beautiful though.
Next came the assembly. Super easy if you follow the adorable cartoon people in the Ikea manual. It just involved a lot of trying to match the screws right. And putting things in the wrong place sometimes…. but eventually we had it all together, with the new silver drawer pulls screwed into the drawers.
The one last thing, totally un-needed but done because I’m just very particular or something…. A strip of molding around the bottom, with the legs cut short to prevent any tipping (but the piece turned out very sturdy anyways, so this wasn’t a concern….) and the molding used to stop tiny hands from sticking tiny things in the tiny gap between the drawers and the floor, thus decreasing my “bending down to pick stuff up” time. Not that I won’t be doing any of that, just decreasing it. We painted it the same grey, cut it at a 45 degree angle, glued it on, and then fastened it with screws too just for luck and extra kisses and….
HEART EYES HEART EYES HEART EYES!!! I love it. I love the look. There is a little bit of molding sticking over the edge there on the right, but a bit of sanding and some more paint will clean that up right away.
The end result is a really mid century modern look. (Thanks mom for the terminology). The warm grey worked really well with the stain. Overall it has almost a kind of purple-y kind of undertone, very very subtle and it changes in lighting…. but I think it looks just wicked fresh. And my favorite is that this bit of furniture is one I could put anywhere in the house as well, and it would be just fine. It isn’t overly “BOY’S ROOM!”
So there you have it. Transforming one plain piece of furniture into something totally new, and personalized, in just a week. I could have done it faster if I was more motivated, but for the unmotivated person, a week is pretty good, alright? You can do it too! And now, baby boy Bécar, the bedroom is ready for you.
