West Elm Inspired Storage Chest

I’ve been holding onto the pics in this tutorial for over a year now, so please excuse me if there are gaps in any of the instructions. I’m kind of playing this one by ear since my memory isn’t always the best, but feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I have no reason why it’s taken so long to get this written up, so let’s just jump right in, shall we?

During the last ORC I participated in, which was late 2014 (see those posts here), my focus was to redesign my living room/dining room area on a budget. That meant using a lot of what we already had in order to fill the space. We happened to have 2 Ikea expedit (now Kallax) bookshelves we had purchased a few years back just taking up space. One was being used in the corner of the living room already, and the other had been in the basement for about 2 years. The storage space they could provide was certainly needed. I just needed to figure out a way to get them to fit the design I had planned. 

Sources (clockwise from top right): 1 / 2 / 3 (unknown) / 4 / 5

Enter the West Elm Wood Tiled Dresser.  I conspired a way to transform: 

I began by painting the units with glossy enamel paint.  I created a custom color by mixing the Rustoleum protective enamel in Gloss White and Gloss Almond (approximately 2 parts white to 1 part almond) to get a soft ecru shade. Then, I installed 8 Kallax inserts with doors – 4 for each bookcase.  Side note: Though my bookcases are the older Expedit units, all of the Kallax upgrades do fit into them.  Next, I used iron-on wood veneer strips, cut into 4″ x 1″ segments, to achieve the wood ’tile’ look.  After ironing all of the tiles to each door in a running bond/brick pattern, I used a small paintbrush to create the same feel as the West Elm dresser.  I stained some tiles with wood stain, painted others white, & left some unfinished.  I just eyed it to determine which tiles to paint/stain and which tiles to leave unfinished.  After all that was done, I white-washed the whole door a few times (using very watered down paint) to get the overall effect of the West Elm chest. 

The whole process, albeit time-consuming, wasn’t difficult at all and this project turned out to be one of the ones I love most in the space.