Among those who have a large family and need extra storage space or among those who have just bought a new home and are looking for nice furniture to equip it with, it is not a secret that buying an apothecary cabinet is a big investment.
Apothecary cabinets look great in large living-rooms or dining-rooms, they give the room a vintage look and a nice retro touch, while they offer plenty of storage space at the same time.
However, buying one of them is not something you can do without thinking about it twice. And that’s because they’re quite expensive. To give you an idea, a nice apothecary cabinet could cost as much as $6,000! Yes, you read that correctly.
When Danie’s friend, Jess, told her she was looking to buy an apothecary cabinet, she tried to come up with an idea in order to help her friend save a good amount of money she could probably invest elsewhere.
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Danie Berger is a Canadian YouTube creator who started her own channel last year, after leaving her dream job to pursue a bigger dream. She has always enjoyed DIY projects and that’s what she’s sharing with her viewers. As she explains on her blog, she believes even life itself is a DIY project in progress so she lives it with passion and can’t wait for the next steps.
So, Danie gave it some thought and decided she could use two IKEA dressers, hack them and make an apothecary cabinet out of them spending very little money compared to the initial amount.
In the video below, you can see the whole process and listen to Danie describe every step in detail.
First, the DIYer and her friend went to IKEA to get the Tarva dressers. What was also necessary for the project was: wood stain, a 14″ backsaw, measuring tape, a triangle, 2 clamps, 1x6x10 lumber (2 of them), Kreg Jig and screws, pull handles, and label holders.
Then, it was time to get down to work. It seems that the most challenging part was to put together the IKEA dressers, but once that was done, the rest of the steps were pretty easy to follow.
After assembling the bodies of the two dressers, she measured the drawer fronts and drew a line along the middle of them. Then she sawed into the line trying not to go too deep into it, but rather do the surface so that it only looked like one drawer was in fact two separate ones.
Then, she stained all the parts of the dressers using spray stain and she let that dry overnight. When that was ready, she moved on to assemble the drawers.
After that, it was time to head over to the hardware store. She bought two 1 by 6 boards to close off the bottom section of the dressers so that they looked more like cabinets. She stained those too, and then screwed them into place.
It was then time for the pull handles and label holders. She measured the middle of each “fake drawer” and added them there, which really made the whole thing come to life.
Finally, it was time to put everything together. Danie took the dressers to Jess’ home and when she put the dressers side by side it was actually impossible to tell the difference between this piece of furniture and an actual apothecary cabinet.
The two friends decorated it as well, and the final product was amazing!
Really, this is the best IKEA hack we’ve seen so far!
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