Campaign furniture

Campaign dresser

Campaign dresser

I first saw a campaign dresser when I was looking for a hack for my Ikea nightstands. Campaign furniture was initially made for travel, by military personnel, to be used on military campaigns. Hence the name. I just loved the slightly industrial, vintage vibe it has. It looks great with the natural, stained wood, or painted. Right now, I’ve got my sights set on something that I can turn into a great, stained, campaign piece! So stay tuned.

Ikea Malm hack

Done, done, done!

Ikea hack: Malm into Campaign nightstand
I’m actually loving how these turned out. I know I was complaining about them earlier, and honestly, I wouldn’t do it again knowing what I know now, but I do like the final product. What’s especially hard to swallow is that I’m the queen of reselling things for a profit. Or at the very least, breaking even. But these, there’s absolutely no way I’ll be able to recoup my costs. That being said, they work perfectly in our bedroom and I don’t think I”ll be selling them anytime soon. Wink wink.

Ikea hack: Malm into Campaign nightstand Ikea hack: Malm into Campaign nightstand

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Usually I don’t love Ikea furniture. You’d think that me, being a furniture refinisher and all, would have a fantastic set of nightstands. But I’ve been looking for nightstands for what seems like forever, and just haven’t found any that have quite enough storage. And then one day, in a moment of organizational weakness a few months ago, I broke down and bought a matching set of Malm 3-drawers to use as nightstands in our bedroom. So far they’ve worked out perfectly. Tons of storage space, and they fit nicely, in the space next to our bed. The downside, they’re not that attractive. Too modern for my taste.

So I was surfing online the other day and I came across a bunch of Ikea hacks. That’s where you take a piece of Ikea furniture and spruce it up so it looks like something entirely different.

These 3 were my inspirations:
Ikea hack - campaign style dresserIkea hack - Industrial styleikea Malm-with overlay

After looking at all the ideas out there I decided to go with the campaign style dresser on the left. Except I’m going with dark grey instead of blue. The brass corner pieces I picked up at my local Home Depot.  The handles were a bit of a shocker.  Couldn’t find them in any local stores unfortunately so I had to resort to ordering them online.  Lee Valley & Veritas was the only place that the price wasn’t ridiculous.  I had a hard time paying $6.80 per piece, times 6.  But that was much better than $25 each!  Does it seem strange that the hardware for these nightstands costs more than the nightstand itself????? Yeah, I was thinking that too…..

The overlays are gorgeous…..but OMG pricey.  When you add up the cost of the overlays, plus the price of the dresser itself, you might as well just go buy a nice piece of furniture….that’s solid wood.  There, I said it.

Here’s how they looked when I started:

My Ikea Malm 3-drawer nightstand

Here’s the first coat of grey paint:
Ikea Malm nightstands sprayed gray Ikea Malm nightstand sprayed gray

The finished product!

Coming Soon! I’m 90% done. The only thing left to do is finish adding the corner brass pieces….all 24 of them. Ugh….
All the handles are on. I received them in the mail from Lee Valley Tools yesterday. On first glance they’re gorgeous…all shiny and such. My dad and I spent an hour today installing them. And when I say my dad and I, I mean my dad. I used the Dustbuster and vacuumed up all the bits of wood shavings while he was drilling. So after all 6 handles were on we noticed that they’re almost impossible to use. VERY hard to get your fingers around the little handle pull because it’s completely flush with the rest of the handle. Bad decision. Bad. I would not recommend buying the same pulls if you’re going to attempt this hack. But what’s the alternative really? A $25 pull? Not for me. My solution? I’m going to get some of those little adhesive rubber bumpers and stick them beneath the handle pull, to lift them up off the rest of the handle. Genius, if I do say so myself! :o)

If I were you though, I’d go for something like this:

  1. Paint the dresser dark gray.  If that’s a bit too ‘office filing cabinet-ish’ for you, try a dark teal.
  2. Add Martha Stewart self adhesive bookplates.  The large ones.
  3. Get some pretty brushed nickel pulls, like these.
  4. Voila, you’re done!

Brushed nickel cabinet pull Martha Stewart self adhesive bookplate