IKEA Malm Dresser Update

I recently gave you an update on our super exciting and looong project list.  One of the easiest ones of all was going to be the white dresser in our dressing room.  The reason I selected this one first, was because I had cheated and purchased all of the supplies awhile back, so I had everything I needed on hand now.  And, many of you seemed most interested in that one as well, so it worked out swimmingly!

Here she was in her previous state:

Pretty boring eh?

But first, let's chat about the rest of the room.  Originally we had the dresser between our armoires.  Then, for some reason we moved it.  I thought a vanity would look better than the dresser in that location.  But as we have been living with it, it absolutely makes no layout sense to have the dresser across the room from the rest of the clothes?  So when thinking about the design, we had to keep in mind that it was going to be in front of a really busy wall.

The plan I had in my brain, was to go to the home improvement store and find some very thin wood trim to affix to the front, just to give it some more dimension.  I went, I didn't find anything that I loved.  Or that wouldn't cause my husband 564 cuts.  Then, the fabulous blog world introduced me to Overlays.  The super easy and lovely way to quickly update IKEA furniture.  Consider me a fan.  I found a promo code and ordered four of these.  They were exactly what I envisioned doing with trim, but without all the work off cutting.

When they arrived, I got right to work painting them.  I selected a grellow color that I had color matched to the stripe duvet in the adjoining master bedroom:

I just placed the Overlays on a box and painted with a brush.  Super simple.

Along with the Overlays, I wanted to add some drawer pulls, but I didn't want anything that would compete too much, so I went with simple glass knobs I found on eBay.

The update was pretty simple.  We started out by laying things out on the drawer fronts first, just to get an idea where we wanted the knobs and Overlays to be placed.  Then, we measured:

And installed the knobs:

Next we used a small tube of Liquid Nails to affix the Overlays to the drawer fronts:

We found that we had a very small time frame to wiggle the Overlay in the correct spot, with a quick tape measure check, and then it set quite quickly.

So here you can see a natural progression:

The best part of any project is putting it all back together.  The dresser was moved to it's new home between the armoires:

 

As you may also notice, this update was a trickle effect to another update.  My necklace display went from bright yellow boarder to simple floral fabric.

The yellow just wasn't right.  And the tin graphic over the cork wasn't right either.  It's OK, I know I make mistakes all the time.  It is about learning and growing right?  That's what I tell myself anyway.  And I can reuse the tin for another project, so nothing lost.  The new display is still the same cork, now just with fabric over the front, which is a much more simple look.  It also gives me more hanging space since I removed the frame's matte.

But back to the dresser, I really love the difference the painted Overlays and new knobs made to the simple, inexpensive IKEA dresser!

So chic and pretty!  How about a before and after to save your scrolling fingers:

And, it feels just wonderful to have another project checked off the list!  Once the paint dried, the whole project only took about an hour {while also watching Hulu so we were a bit distracted}.

Anyone knocking a project off the ol' list this weekend?  Who else is a giant Overlays fan?