Hemnes hack.

One of my New Year's resolutions from last year was to finish the house. It's not even close to done. Fail. Projects pretty much came to a halt, like, back in June. Life is so busy! Anyway, we are finally getting back to work on the spare room. The first project I did was my filing cabinet. Then I tackled this Hemnes dresser from Ikea.

I really wanted to get rid of my Hemnes and pick up a vintage piece with some interesting details, but anyone that owns a Hemnes knows they are pretty solid pieces of furniture (for Ikea furniture, I mean), so I decided to hold onto it and add some details myself. 

My Hemnes before:

My Hemnes now:

I didn't take any progress pictures, because I was l-a-z-y. Matt kept asking, aren't you going to take any pictures? I just shook my head no. Sorry, folks. I'll be better next time. I will give you a run down of what we did though and if you have any questions please ask!

So, I completely took apart the dresser because the inside has super cute yellow striped drawer liners, see:

and I didn't want to chance messing them up at all. And I didn't want to deal with tape. Tape is the worst. 

I used a coat of Zinsser Cover Stain. Then two coats of paint. On the drawers is Allen and Roth paintable wallpaper from Lowes. I attached it with light spray adhesive, and the wallpaper needed two coats of paint because it was absoooorbent. Then we attached the molding (that I primed and spray painted white) that we bought from a local woodworking shop with Gorilla super glue (make sure you don't get the one that dries white). Then I added two coats of this Minwax Polycrylic to the whole piece. Since it's water based it's easy to use and clean up. And I used satin finish because I didn't want this piece too shiny. The Anthro-esque nobs I got off eBay for a lot less cheese than they're sold for at Anthro. 

Here's a side by side:

We want to find some wood appliques for the top drawers that mimic the pattern in the wallpaper but as of now I'm pretty stoked about it. What do you guys think?