IKEA Hack: RAST Built-In Media Center
Hi everyone! Madeline here from Ellis & Page! Since we moved into our new house, we have been working hard to make it feel more our style – you can see how we painted the grout and updated the beams! When we first moved into the house, this room had a sliding glass door in that led to a room with a hot tub. The hot tub room also had sliders into our bedroom, so the hot tub room became part of the master (there was no hot tub when we bought it!) and suddenly we had sliding glass doors into our master bedroom from our living room. Not much privacy!
The other issue? The wall in the living room has paneling on it- so if we drywalled the space, we would have a big hole. My goal here was to try to make the whole space feel intentional- not like we were covering up a feature we didn’t like. So, the nook was born!
DIY IKEA Hack Built-In Media Center
First we framed in a little recessed nook and dry walled it. Then we hung the tv.
It wasn’t pretty, but I was still brainstorming. We had 11 inches to work with in the nook- not enough for nearly any type of furniture- but I wanted drawers! And then I remembered the RAST. The lovely RAST dressed that has been hacked so many time. It is shallow. It has drawers. And it is wood- perfect to finish exactly the way I like it!
Once we put the RAST dressers together, they were a tiny bit too deep- but ended up being able to notch out the section that we needed to fit into the floor. Then we shimmed everything to make it as level as possible. 
For the space in between the two, we used 1 x 1 dowels and a leftover piece of mdf board. The trim on the sides is 1 x 2 mdf (and we had to trim out the inside as well- the drywall was not flush with the moulding so that was quite a headache!) The knobs look great, right? We had to throw a few in so we could get the drawers back out!
Finally, all that was left was painting, hardware and adding the top- just a stained piece of plywood! The hardware was less than $8 each- a steal I think!
Overall, I think we did a pretty good job! When I look at the space I don’t even remember the doors being there- and I hope that others don’t realize there was ever anything but our tv nook!
Most of the drawers are still empty, but they will be a great place to store board games, movies, and even extra throw blankets.
Have you ever hacked a RAST? I would love to see! Or used any other IKEA products to make a built in? I love IKEA hacks!
More TV media center ideas:
DIY fireplace with hidden television nook
how to use reclaimed wood to frame a television
95 ways to decorate around and hide TV and electronics
Madeline blogs with her sister at Ellis & Page. She just bought a fixer upper right on the water in North Carolina. Slowly but surely, she is working on making it beautiful again!
Your media center using RAST dressers looks fabulous. I am considering using 2 RAST dressers also for a project in my home office. I too have space constraints and need a shallow dresser. I have read reviews of this dresser…..both favorable AND unfavorable. Could be some folks just are’t handy enough to put furniture together correctly. Would like to know how the drawers work……do they glide satisfactory? This was a complaint that I read.
Thank you!
I think the drawers work great! They have plastic slides, so they are not as high quality as some of IKEA’s other hardware, but I have found that they work well.(You also might want to look at the instructions for putting the RAST together- on their website- to see how it all fits together) Hope this helps!