IKEA furniture is cute, simple, affordable, and easy to put together (I know some people like to complain that it isn't, but I've yet to be stumped by IKEA's assembly instructions). Not only are IKEA products great for decorating a home on a budget, but they also make the perfect pieces for DIYers to flex their crafting skills on! You don't have to go broke buying an IKEA piece to experiment with, and if the project doesn't come out the way you hoped, it's not like you've ruined a one-of-a-kind piece in the process.
The right DIYer can elevate a nice but generic IKEA piece into something eye-catching and iconic. Take home decor hacker Ashley Wilson, who transformed a simple IKEA nightstand into a charming, classic dollhouse with just a few additions!
Ashley ( @athomewithashley on TikTok) was originally inspired by this Dollhouse Nightstand from the Pottery Barn Kids collection. She was in love with its cute, vintage aesthetic- not so much its $450 price tag, though. Luckily, Ashley had the DIY skills to create a budget-friendly Pottery Barn dupe by building off an IKEA nightstand for a fraction of the price!
Ashley's used a white SONGESAND nightstand as the cornerstone for her dollhouse transformation project. At $89, the IKEA nightstand costs just a fifth of what the Pottery Barn nightstand did, but there's a problem. Even if we were to look past the lack of legs (which Ashley added on later), the door on the SONGESAND is completely different. The handle is different, and unlike the Pottery Barn piece, it doesn't come all the way up to the top, leaving an open space for a small shelf.
Ashley doesn't address it in her condensed TikTok tutorial, but she explained how she fixed this in her step-by-step written guide on her blog, "At Home with Ashley" (she made a full-length YouTube tutorial , too). The CliffNotes version is, she assembled the SONGESAND without adding the interior shelving or the door, then created a cardboard template for the new, full-sized dollhouse door. She then cut a 3/4"-inch-thick piece of plywood down to the appropriate dimensions (18-1/4″ x 14-1/16″), overlaid her cardboard template, and drew pencil markings for the doors and windows. From there, it was easy to cut out the openings and install holes for the hinges (Ashley said she just reused the hinges and screws that would have gone with the original SONGESAND door).
After that (plus installing new legs and shortening the shelf to fit the new door), Ashley was able to sand, paint, and install the little doors, windows, and other accessories to complete her dollhouse dupe! In her cost breakdown, Ashley claimed to have only spent $201 in total, not even half of what the Pottery Barn original would have cost before shipping. Ashley even went further than the Pottery Barn piece did, too, adding wallpaper and other interior details to turn it into an actual, two-room dollhouse. When you can take a concept and improve upon it for half the price of the original, that's a DIY win!
Ashley's IKEA transformation may look high-end and hard to pull off, but with her detailed guides, she made the process easy for even novice furniture flippers to follow along with. If, on the other hand, you want even MORE of a challenge, well... let's just say, Pottery Barn also has a big regency dollhouse armoire going for $1,699, and IKEA has a similar-looking SUNDVIK wardrobe for $279. I'll let your furniture-flipping fantasies carry you the rest of the way.
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