I Hated my Ikea Hemnes Dresser

Goal: I want my apartment to look quaint, chic and overall truly reflect my personalty.

Problem: I own a piece of Ikea furniture. That horrid, plain looking piece of furniture that happens to be sturdy as a rock and you have no good reason to get rid of it. 

Solution: Paint it, of course.

 I googled tons of tutorials on how to do this and the stuff I found was really impressive. Like this:

http://californiacallahans.blogspot.com/2011/12/hemnes-hack.html 

How cute is that?! 

Now, if you have limited time and aren't totally confident about your painting skills (like me), you can try highlighting the borders and changing the hardware. 

For my Hemnes dresser, I decided to paint the borders and knobs with Amaco's Rub N' Buff Metalic Finish in Antique Gold. If you're not familiar with this stuff, be warned, it's very addicting!  You'll want to use it on everything, probably even your cat. 

The entire project took less than 30 minutes.  I don't have step by step pictures, but the process is incredibly easy.

First, I taped around the edges and used an old rag to rub the wax on the wood. The best thing about using a finish like Rub N' Buff is that you don't need a lot of it. I used a little less than half of the tiny tube for the entire dresser including the knobs. 

 

Changing the knobs is incredibly easy, but I didn't mind keeping most the original knobs (it was also cost effective). 

Now, my Hemnes dresser may not be a charming antique, but I think a little color adds pizzazz to a plain old dresser. What do you think?