Ikea Hacking A Malm Into A Built-In Dresser: a house log

There will consistently be a special place in my heart for a good Ikea hack. Not that I am dubbing this one especially involved (it is in fact wonderfully plain – which means anyone can do it). All it took were a few small tweaks to a basic $99 Malm dresser to make it look like a custom built-in at the beach house. And it has turned out to be the ideal thing for the funny little nook at the top of the back staircase in the beach house’s back bedroom.

rug / striped towel / leather hardware / gold mirror / bathroom table 

You’ve likely noticed that one of our go-to ways to hack Ikea pieces is to make them look more built-in. Our first project like this was using Pax wardrobes to create a sleeping nook (and more closet space) for our bedroom in our first house. That simply involved adding a header and some crown around the top of the wardrobe boxes and foregoing doors for curtains. Straightforward peasy. You can see them on the left in the picture below:

That photo on the right above is perhaps our most intense hack, where we used the now-discontinued Fjell dressers in our son’s bedroom to create floor-to-ceiling bookcases (the fact that Ikea no longer makes these is a tragedy because they are strong solid wood dressers). That was a bit more involved with molding, paint, filler pieces around the sides, and shelves – but still truly doable. You can read all about the process here.

But back to our built-in dresser at the beach. I promised at the start of this post that this latest project was an extremely straightforward one. It in short boiled down to using trim pieces to make it look built-in, then adding a few customized elements – like leather hardware pulls and a thicker wood top – to make it a little more interesting and upgraded than the extremely ubiquitous dresser that we began with.

This is in fact the main clothing storage for the back bedroom at the beach house (the one we stay in whenever we are there) and it has been working out so well to have a dresser tucked back there now. Originally this room was fully open to the back staircase… meaning it was fully open to the kitchen downstairs (you could hear everything and anyone could run up without encountering a closed door).

It is a large upgrade to have actual doors that we can close before going to bed – and adding that wall with pocket doors not only provided some pleasant privacy, it also feels original to the house and does not block any light from that window during the day (the doors remain open fairly much all the time except when we are sleeping). We talked about it a little more in last week’s podcast, since it is one of our GO-TO decisions that we made in this whole house.

But adding that wall also created this nook, which we consistently figured would act somewhat like that room’s closet. At one point we were in fact going to frame it in with a door and everything, but after living with it for a while we chose it might make this landing a little crowded and (since the stairs are narrow already) we preferred something that would keep the space feeling more open and less packed.

Lucky for us, the space was nearly exactly the width of an Ikea Malm dresser. They are a strong budget dresser – only $99! – plus the flat fronts would nicely mimic the flat-front cabinets in our kitchen below. But to make it look like a built-in piece, we had to start by prying off all of the existing trim around the floor of that little nook. The Malm fit nicely wall-to-wall, but the brought in thickness of the baseboard and quarter round would not allow for us to slide in the dresser until we popped it off.

Once we had the dresser constructed and the molding popped off, we could then slide it into place, and we used some white filler pieces to fill in the gaps on either side (these were in fact leftovers from the kitchen install – but a painted piece of 1 x 2″ board would do the trick). I simply aligned them with the front edge of the dresser and fired my nail gun through the side of the dresser into them (and the wall behind them) to hold them there. There was still a little bit of gap, but nothing a little caulk did not fix later.

***NOTE: In addition to nailing through the sides of the dresser, we used the supplied hardware to anchor the back of the dresser to the wall. Like most dressers, the Malm is prone to tipping, so this is a vital step in installing a dresser like this***

You can also see in the photo above that I reinstalled the baseboard for that side filler piece to rest on (it extended simply a bit behind the dresser on each side) but waited to add the quarter round until later. Also: that small piece across the front of the dresser is part of the Malm itself, so that is not something I brought in.

Once the baseboard was reinstalled and both sides were filled in, I cut the quarter-round molding and ran it around the dresser’s footprint – so it butted right against the dresser itself. Continuing the quarter-round along the front of the Malm is a big part of making it look built-in and a lot more seamless.

We in fact hadn’t planned on adding the wood top originally, but when we got in installed the top was looking a little dinky. Fortunately, we had a scrap piece of butcher block counter leftover from the kitchen that was large sufficient. The walls are not perfectly square (thanks old house!) so we cut a piece of cardboard first to use as a template for cutting the counter. We only had one shot at this, so we took our time!

The result of all that slow double-checking and cardboard-templating was a ideal fit (huzzah!) so we let out a communal sigh of relief. It looks so much better with the thicker top, and the wood accent is a pleasant way to make it visually “belong” in this house (you know, with all the wood doors, pine floors, the matching counter downstairs, etc). If you do not want to buy a whole span of butcher block from Ikea for this hack, you can buy smaller “project panels” or butcher block pieces at stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s (or you could simply use wood planks for a similar look).

The other element that gave it a custom look are the leather pulls. We snagged these at Ikea when we picked up the Malm, and they are $10 for a set of two. There are similar options on Etsy too (you can get these in a bunch of distinct leather colors), but truly any kinda of hardware helps these plain jane Malms look a little more interesting.

My only pointer for installing the hardware (besides measure, measure, measure!) is to take some effort to prevent splintering when you drill your holes. The white finish on Ikea pieces is swift to crack when drilled, and can easily flake off – sometimes in big chunks.

I was not too worried about the front of the dresser because I knew the leather pulls would cover a lot of sins, so I simply used a piece of painter’s tape to drill through on the front side to discourage any splintering or cracking. But since the finish is more prone to flaking at your drill bit’s exit point than it is entry point, and because there was not much to hide damage on the backside of the drawer (it was simply the screw head back there) I clamped a piece of scrap wood tightly to the inside of the drawer. It worked like a charm and I was grateful that I took the precaution.

And of course, the unsung hero of the project was caulk. We used it to blend all of the seams in the baseboard, plus any remaining gaps around the wall, which made the whole thing look a lot more polished.

We hung one of Sherry’s go-to mirrors above it because a mirror is consistently a good option for a small space, and the gold finish picked up the warm wood tones nicely. We do not keep anything on top of the dresser because when we are there for a swift stay, we simply plop our suitcase on top and live out of it, but it has been truly pleasant these last few weeks to in fact unpack clothes into the drawers for our longer stays.

Also, if you are like my dad and you live in constant fear of someone falling down these stairs (do not worry – the only falling we have done on them is UP. Yes, both Sherry and I have tripped going up them, but it has only resulted in a stubbed toe or two), I hoped to show you this picture with me in it for scale. There is thankfully plenty of floor space behind the dresser to stand and comfortably get clothes out of an open drawer without worrying about taking a tumble backwards. In fact, I’d have to do a fairly epic backwards lunge if I hoped to get my foot over the overhang.

And again, if you are interested in checking out some of our previous Ikea hacks, here are a few go-tos:

• Our first bedroom’s built-in Pax wardrobes
• A wood-wrapped Expedit bookcase that became a changing table

• Two Fjell dressers that became built-in bookcases (that post is mostly about the Ikea hack, and we separately blogged about adding the shelves and trimming it out)

• Using a Pax as a custom mudroom closet at the beach house

• Customizing a Vittsjo shelf with spray paint and contact paper

• Making built-in cabinets in our bonus room using Ikea kitchen cabinets

And for other furniture hacks and Hands-on ideas, we have a whole category for ya. You can peruse all of those posts here.

P.S. If you are looking for beach house paint colors info – or to find out where we got nearly all of the furniture, accessories, rugs, and other stuff in the beach house – this page has all of that info for you.

*This post contains affiliate links*