Ikea Rast TV Console Replication

Don’t you love a good Ikea hack? I’m in love with this Ikea Rast TV Console dresser hack that I saw done by Marianne on her blog, In Between Chaos. In fact, I love it so much, I decided to replicate it in our new house! After reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) Marianne’s instructions and studying the build of the unit, I showed my husband the pictures, and he was even more on board with this project than I anticipated. (We don’t usually agree on design styles or pieces, so I was pleasantly surprised!)

There was almost a month of discussion about modifications we’d need to make, which almost resulted in us not building the piece at all! My husband was really excited to set up his fancy TV and install his surround sound speakers. In our old townhouse, the family room didn’t have his ideal set up for watching TV or a movie. He was eager to arrange the room in such a way as to have his ideal viewing setup. I was equally excited about this unit. However, when we started talking, we were unable to come up with a solution for how the main center speaker would be situated in a way so as to not be visible when not in use. We also racked our brains to determine where to house the receiver for the A/V equipment.

Necessity is the mother of invention…

There were talks of combining four of the drawers in a way that would create a shelf, and then the faces of the drawers would be connected and mounted so that they could flip out and slide in on the top, so that the receiver had lots of space around it for airflow, but could be hidden when not in use, but that didn’t solve the speaker issue. It also wouldn’t have worked because the dresser and the drawers are not as deep as the receiver, and therefore we’d never get the drawers faces flush. Then we thought we could cut off a piece of the side, so that the speaker was housed sideways and only visible if you looked at it from the side. Unfortunately, the speakers and receiver were also wider than the drawer space. In the end, we had to compromise (like so many other times in marriage!).

Any console even remotely close to the size and scale we needed in order to balance the TV was insanely expensive and not the style I was aiming for. I didn’t want to give up hope on building this gorgeous piece. We decided that the center speaker would sit on the top of the console. Once the console was built, Chris kept offering to try to create something that could mask the speaker, but ultimately I felt that trying to hide it would make it stand out more.  The center speaker sits on the console, front and center, and it really isn’t that bad. The receiver sits on a shelf in the back of the room. Chris ran wires along the baseboard, to a corner, up the corner, along the ceiling, and back down the corner where the receiver lives, with openings for the wires leading to the two mounted speakers up high on the back wall, behind the couch. Not only to the cable tracks not look too bad, I have to admit that the sound quality is pretty epic.

 

In the end, there were only a few changes we made to this design. The biggest difference, which is noted in the directions, is that we changed how we mounted the back support rails. I also used baseboard moulding along the bottom of the piece, rather than a 1”x6” piece of wood like Marianne used. Keep reading to see our construction process and notes!

Materials:

4 Ikea Rast chest of drawers (usually listed for $39.99, but I got them on sale for $29.99)

9 corner braces, similar to these

Small moulding/trim of your preference to trim the drawers (I used 9 8-foot pieces of this)

Wood glue (optional)

Spackle (to fill nail/screw holes before you paint)

3 8 foot sections of 1”x4” boards (like these)

1 8 foot 1”x6” board (like these)

Baseboard moulding (I used this)

Paint of your choice and paint accessories (brushes, drop clothes, etc)

 

Tools:

Phillips head screwdriver

Flat head screwdriver

Powered drill

Mitre saw (helps with making angled or beveled cuts like I did for the toe kick moulding, but any other saw that can at least do straight cuts will work too, if you don’t need to do angled cuts)

Level

Tape measure

Nail gun, nails

Hammer

¼” drill bit & screws

5/16” drill bit and screws

Clamps (to stabilize trim as you nail or screw pieces into place)

Sandpaper

Directions

1: Assemble your first dresser according to the instructions included with the piece. (We used wood glue throughout to help it stay more sturdy).

2: At this point, you’ll begin to construct the second dresser by leaving off the side wall and using the right side (when facing it) wall from dresser 1 as the left side wall for dresser 2. In order the connect the second dresser to the first (and dresser 3 to 2, and dresser 4 to 3), you need to drill holes completely through the side wall where the plastic sliding rail for the drawers goes. There is plenty of space that when you those rails go in on both sides, they stay in place, no problem. Use a 5/16” drill bit to make the holes for the drawer slide rails.

 

 

Mixing it up a little

3: This is where we changed things up a little. My husband the engineer was worried that using the same hole to install the supporting piece of wood in the back (to keep the dresser from wobbling side to side) would not be secure enough because the little wooden dowels from Ikea were not long enough to firmly hold two rails in place through the shared side wall. Therefore, he set about to drill new holes in such a way so as to alternate the height of where they were mounted in the back. In the picture you can see where we drilled holes through all the side walls to accommodate the horizontal support rail in the back. Use a 5/16” drill bit to make the holes for the drawer slides and the screws indicated in the Rast directions, and use a ¼” drill bit to make the holes where the wooden dowels go in. Notice the two sets of holes where ¼” and 5/16” are close, one set on top of the other slightly – that is so that you can slightly alternate the location of that support rail in the back of the dresser.

4: Use corner braces (this isn’t exactly what we used, but it’s basically the same) to secure the tops and toe kicks to the side walls a little more. (We used 9, 3 on each for dressers 2, 3, and 4).

 

5: Continue building the structure of the console until all 4 are connected. 

Once the main structure is built…

6: Assemble the drawers, but leave off the knobs and do not install drawers in the unit.

7: This is where a lot of your personal preference will come in. I wanted very simple trim around the drawers, like Marianne did, so I used very thin, narrow moulding to create the trim. Mine was found in the moulding section, and the size was similar to Marianne’s, since I simply couldn’t find the lattice trim, like she used, in my local hardware store. I used a miter saw to make these cuts.

8: Attach drawer trim using wood glue and nail gun. Use spackle to fill in and smooth nail holes. Sand when dry.

9: Attach 1×4” boards and 1×6” board to the top of the unit to level out the top. Spackle/sand if you’d like.

 

10: Use the same thin trim from the drawers to create trim around the edges of the top along the two sides and front to hide the gaps and make the whole top look level and finished.

11: Use your other 1×4” board to cut to size and fill in the toe kick areas of each dresser (ours were not always level so you might need to get creative with how you fill in each. I also used pieces of left-over trim in some sections.)

12: Cut your lumber/moulding to size and attach to the bottom front and two sides of the console, using nails or wood screws, taking care to counter-sink them lower than level with the wood so that you can spackle and paint it and never see that hardware. I used baseboard moulding that I cut with my miter to create beveled cuts to make the corners of the moulding match up nicely. My piece was similar to this, but always check the dimensions on your piece before purchasing or cutting.

13: Spackle in any holes, let dry, sand the surfaces to ensure a smooth finish, clean the surfaces of all dust and debris so that the paint will stick, and then paint your color of choice. I used Behr’s Bakery Box color white in an eggshell finish. I needed two coats and only painted the parts that would be visible.

14: Paint or prep drawer knobs. I wasn’t excited to shell out for 24 knobs, so I opted to paint the ones from Ikea, like Marianne. I used a black acrylic paint I already had. I used the screws to help hold the knobs upright so they could dry by mounting the knobs on an empty cardboard box.

 

Final Assembly

15: Once everything is dry, finish attaching the knobs to the drawers, insert the drawers in the console, and bam! You’ve got an awesome looking piece! I’d love to hear your thoughts and see anything you try!