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You are here: Home / A Day in My Life / IKEA RAST BATCOMPUTER

IKEA RAST BATCOMPUTER

March 7, 2016 by SmartGirl Leave a Comment

I was totally stoked to be invited to take part in the Hickory Hardware IKEA RAST Hack competition!!! And in my mind I was going to be much further along on my kitchen project by now, but of course that’s never how these things go.  So… I opened my RAST box today.  Yes today.  And I was all set to make an industrial/vintage/worn wood looking thing, but once I got the dresser together I wasn’t feeling it anymore.  IKEA RAST

The RAST is a teeny tiny little thing and I made it even smaller by hacking off the bottom.  That is my RAST pet peeve — I hate the way the bottom is inset from the sides.  I took spent the morning modifying mine to my heart’s delight, but it was all for nothing, because I ended up covering the bottom in my final hack anyway.  My (pointless) modifications included using the top of the dresser as the bottom, cutting off about an inch from the bottom of each side, and adding a piece of molding along the bottom.  My plan was to add legs.  Or wheels.  Cutting off bottom of IKEA RAST dresserIKEA RAST correcting the ugly bottom IKEA RAST with better bottom

Once I got it assembled (and dude is that thing CHEAP!) I carried that little dresser all over my house looking for just the right spot.  And yes I was cursing myself for leaving it until the last-minute, but what are you going to do?

I originally thought I could use it my son’s room, maybe to hold his shoes.  OMG, it barely fit his little six-year-old shoes.  Then I tried it in the hall closet.  Nope, it was actually too wide.  Go figure since the thing is only about 2’x2′.  And then it hit me!  Maybe it would fit in the space underneath the basement stairs.  When we renovated the basement I build a little nook under the stairs.  It doesn’t get much use, but my Batman obsessed kid has recently been calling it his Batcave.

Big shocker here — I never finished trimming out the shelves

Never finished shelves under basement stairs

But as luck would have it that little RAST dresser fit with room to spare.IKEA RAST fits with room to spare

My batman obsessed little guy can almost stand up straight in here.My batman obsessed son in the nook under that basement stairs

Check him out helping me when I first built the nook.  OMG!  Love him!!!My little helper in the basement

I decided to embrace the batcave idea and asked my little man what he wanted the dresser to look like.  He didn’t like the idea of a silhouette of Gotham City because that is not what you would see from inside the batcave.  Point taken.  So what is the batcave, you ask?  Well that all depends on which version of Batman you’re talking about.  We went with the 1966 version because my son has been watching the original shows lately.  I liked the idea of the BATCOMPUTER because it seemed easy enough to pull off.01 Batman Original Batcomputer 01 3-17-5 computer66

Or so I thought.  In the end I fell drastically short.   Installing an IKEA RAST dresser under my staircaseIkea RAST hack not finished

The lovely people at Hickory Hardware offered to send me any hardware I wanted for my hack.  Isn’t that nice!?  I looked online several times, but enjoyed checking out the drawer pulls and knobs in person.  This display at Lowe’s caught my eye.HIckory Hardware special order from Lowe's

I really like the 520730, but maybe not so much for a BATCOMPUTER.  What I really need is for Hickory Hardware to let me pick out any hardware I want for my new kitchen cabinets. That would be sweet!!!  I have not painted the doors yet because I am trying to finish up my countertops first.  If I wasn’t playing around with this IKEA hack today I would have been sealing the concrete. Oh well, what’s another few days without a sink and dishwasher.  Sigh.Concrete countertops when will you ever be finished

My son and I did make the time to go to the thrift store and buy a phone we intend to pain red, but that didn’t happen tonight.  If you don’t know a red batphone is a must for a batcave.Batphone

Our batphone will be red one day.  Here’s what the RAST would look like with some snazzy Hickory Hardware pulls.batcomputer gone wrongBATCOMPUTER IKEA RAST hack

Note to self:  It’s hard to take good pictures under stairs at night.  Even with two giant lights.

A big thank you again to Hickory Hardware, but my hack is definitely not competition ready.  And tomorrow it’s back to working on the kitchen for me.

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Filed Under: A Day in My Life, Basement Renovation, Woodworking Tagged With: basement, ikea, kids, spray paint

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