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.  

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.  

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

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

My batman obsessed little guy can almost stand up straight in here.

Check him out helping me when I first built the nook.  OMG!  Love him!!!

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.

Or so I thought.  In the end I fell drastically short.  

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.

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.

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.

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

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.