Forever and Always: how to antique ikea crap.

i've had a few people ask how i redid our dressers the past couple weeks, so i figured i would do a post on it, so that it can be here for all posterity to see.

i'm so glad i did it. hauling all of them downstairs to the garage was annoying, and having our clothes all over our room was also annoying, but the end result. ahhhhh. they go so much better with my vibe.

we have the ikea malm bedroom set, because we were poor college students when we bought them, oh wait, we still are, yet we had no real taste. i tried to get new ones out of my husband.... buuuut he refused quite quickly and told me to deal with it. please, as if i deal with things. i make them better. for under $100 i was able to re-vamp our two night stands, and two dressers, which may seem like a lot to you, but our dresser at ikea is now on sale for $150, so it really did save us a lot of money. plus, they aren't hideous now, so i will be satisfied with them for longer. hehe

getting on with it. it's suuupppper easy to antique ikea stuff. because it's laminate furniture, paint doesn't stick very well to it, so when you want it to look chipped, ta-dah! easy peasy!

** i apologize for crappy iphone pics. i couldn't find my sd card for my camera. dang children**

before: so incredibly cool looking.

after reading several how-to's, i found that you needed a shellac based primer to paint laminate. here's the thing though: when you sand it down at the end, the primer does its job well, and you will be sanding through an additional color before you get to the laminate, which can look kind of weird. my solution:

step one: do a somewhat crappy coat of primer--

enough to coat the furniture, but not make the whole thing entirely white.

**this is very very smelly. do it someplace ventilated, or where you don't have to breathe in the toxins!!**

sidenote: if you just want to repaint and not antique them, do full coats of primer. the object of this is to be able to get the paint off, which is why you use less.

you're supposed to let that dry for 24 hours before you paint it, so do that.

step two: paint.

spray paint and i are bff's. don't judge. it's the same quality of paint as paint out of a can, it just leaves no brush strokes and is a lot less messy. use it. you won't be disappointed.

i typically use valspar or rustoleum. buy a higher end paint, if you don't, you'll end up needing to use more to cover. these run about $3-4 a can. and i think i used about 1 can per nightstand and about 2 per dresser.

first coat:

second coat:

third coat:

tips: spray the top first, let it dry, then lay it down on it's sides to prevent dripping. obviously, that's more challenging for a dresser, but it works well for a night stand.

spray about 12 inches away from the dresser. that will also help not dripping. you want a fine mist going on, not giant lines of paint.

after your paint has dried sufficiently, i would give it at least 6 hours or so, it's time to do my favorite part. sand!

step three: sand.

i used sheets from my sander to do i. mine were medium grit, but you can use fine as well, it depends on how you want the "antiquing" to look.

when i start, i rub horizontally and vertically along the entire drawer. that scuffs it up a bit, then i do circles, so it doesn't look like i purposely put all these lines on it.

after you do that, you can gently sand specific areas down to get the distressed look. there is no right or wrong way to do it, except that you don't want to take off a whole chunk of paint, so the lighter the touch, the better.

after you are done sanding to your liking, the final step:

step four: seal.

you must use this sealer-- the valspar one does not cover as smooth. spray two coats of this on to your dresser to seal your hard work and give it a glossy sheen. make sure you get all the dust off before you paint again!

step five: knob it.

i wanted knobs on mine to make it look a little less like "ikea crap painted over". so if you do, you want your husband to drill holes in yours for you to put them in. for the dressers, we put two in each, for the nightstands, just one.

i bought mine from anthropologie on sale. because i am too cheap to pay $12 a piece for knobs, i go to their sale items and pick from my options. $2.95 a piece FTW!

{this was the most expensive part of the process, if you want to do it cheap, just paint it and call it good}

and then: voila!

the final product! i'm so happy with them! obviously, they aren't true vintage-y style nightstands due to their shape, so i did the best i could with what i had.

when i showed my spouse he said "ew. it looks like the paint is falling off of those. i don't like it". win for me, because that's exactly the look i was going for. haha! not too shabby for ikea eh??

after i finished those ones, i couldn't wait to do my dressers. they were supposed to be grey, i think the paint turned into being a little more blue than i would have liked, but oh well.