Ikea Tarva Dresser Hack

My son doesn’t have a good sized dresser in his room- he’s grown out of his smaller old one. Recently I made a dollhouse nightstand and thought it’d be great to expand the neighborhood a bit! So I’m creating an Ikea Tarva dresser hack for this makeover. I think this DIY will be really run as I take a boring dresser and totally customize it.

ikea tarva dresser hack

Let’s start with the video tutorial so you get an overview on what I did. Then, I’ll dive in with more details below:

If the video doesn’t work here, you can watch it on YouTube here. It’d mean so much if you’d watch the video! I’m trying to get better at my video skills so I can grow my YouTube channel. If you have a few minutes to watch this and/or subscribe, I’d so appreciate it.

SUPPLIES

Tools

the plan

A few months ago I got obsessed with the 1980-1990 dollhouse collection from Singer furniture. I even had a follower reach out saying I could buy the dresser and desk from her! But that didn’t pan out and I was sad. Then I got to thinking- why don’t I just recreate my own version of them? I’ll do it with IKEA furniture so anyone can do this project too!

So I looked at the vintage dollhouse collection I love and translated it in a way that I think will work with the IKEA Tarva dresser and items that I bought online. My plan is to have it look like a townhouse where each neighbor has the same windows and door, but painted things differently to differentiate their side.

step 1- build

To begin, put the Tarva dresser together. Follow the IKEA instructions exactly, except don’t attach the base that comes with it. Note, this is a slow build. Even without putting the base on, this took my husband a few hours to put together.

step 2- shingles

Once the dresser is built, take the top drawers out. Those are the roof section of the house, so let’s add shingles to the room. I bought these dollhouse scalloped shingles for this project. Then I worked from the bottom and glued one piece on at a time.

On the second row, I layered the next set of shingles over the first row. I made sure that every other row started with a half of a shingle so that they overlapped nicely.

It was pretty easy to do- I just cut the wood with an exacto knife where I needed to. Since it’s so thin, it cuts nicely. My hand hurt from squeezing the glue out of the bottle. But pretty easy.

The issue is that where two pieces of the shingle rows meet up, they start to bow out and won’t lay flat. Covering them up with the next layer of shingles helps, but it’s nowhere close to flat.

I laid heavy books over the shingles to help them dry flat. I left these on for 30 minutes before going on to the next row.

What will also work is changing the glue- using hot glue would not get the shingles wet so they’d lie flat. I worry about hot glue standing up to a little kid. Also, I think the ripples add dimension so I’m not too worried about it.

For the top row, the shingles need to be cut in half so it’s just individual shingles. It’s tricky to get these to lay straight, but if they’re not it’ll look bad so go slow to get it right.

Repeat for both top drawers.

step 3- bottom drawers- door and windows

Next, let’s work on the bottom drawers. This will be where the doors and windows will go. To begin, measure half way over on the drawer. Mark with a pencil where that is. Then, mark the center of the door. Put the door on the center mark and trace around the door.

Repeat with the windows. I put them centered on the leftover space on each side of the door and 4″ up. Mark the center of the window. Put the window on the center mark and trace around the window. Do this for the a window on either side of the door.

Repeat for both bottom drawers.

Now it’s time to make an indent in the drawer so the windows and door can sit inside the wood so it looks like a dollhouse.

For the windows, use a Rotary Tool to indent the wood just around the frame where the window will go. The window only needs a small spot for the window frame to sit in.

For the door, use a Router cut deeper into the wood everywhere where the door will go. The door needs much more space to sit in the drawer.

Here’s how the drawers look.

Now the door and windows should fit perfectly on the bottom drawers!

Use wood filler to fill the holes from the knobs. These are in the middle of the window panes so they won’t work here. Wood fill any indentations from any mistakes made when using the rotary tool or router that. Sand the wood filler smooth once it has dried.

Paint the drawers. I choose to do the left side a green color (Spring Reflection by Behr).

For the right side, I did a a coral color (Priceless Coral by Behr).

step 4- middle drawers- windows

And now, the middle drawers. For these, it’ll have a set of three windows and shutters. To begin, measure half way over on the drawer. Mark with a pencil where that is. Then, mark the center of the window. Put the window on the center mark and 4″ up and trace around the outside of the window

Repeat with the rest of the windows. I put them centered on the leftover space on each side of the window and 4″ up. Mark the center of the window. Put the window on the center mark and trace around the window. Do this for both side windows.

Repeat for both middle drawers.

Now it’s time to make an indent in the drawer so the windows and door can sit inside the wood so it looks like a dollhouse. Use a Rotary Tool to indent the wood just around the frame where the window will go. The windows only needs a small spot for the window frame to sit in.

Paint the drawers. I continued with the same colors I did on the bottom drawers. For the windows, I painted them a soft yellow so the windows look like they’re glowing. I did this on all drawers.

Here’s a preview of how cute the Ikea Tarva Dresser Hack is looking!!

step 5- finish work

Finally, let’s get to finish work! First of all I’m painting all the doors, windows, and shutters white. This is 23 pieces and the windows are especially arduous to paint (each side of the window panes need to be painted). Plus, they all need two coats of paint.

Next, cut plastic for the window glass. I used the plastic from card holders for the windows. For this, I didn’t want to buy anything so I was excited when I found that plastic that would’ve been trash! I used scissors to cut them to size.

For the knobs for this dresser, I ordered this set of Edge Pull Hardware. Unfortunately, they got lost in shipping. They’re still on the way, but I can’t show installing them. I’m really bummed about it. The drawers need something to open them (unless you pull on the sides of the drawer), so sorry I can’t show this.

My son loves cats, so for a little Easter egg for him, I painted a cat in a few of the windows with black craft paint and a tiny brush. This took maybe 2 minutes and looks so cute!

Next, I used construction adhesive to attach the doors.

For the windows, I used construction adhesive to glue on the shutters. Then I put the plastic in the windows and pushed them onto the opening for the windows. I didn’t realize how much of the window would show, so I went back and painted the top and bottom ledge that showed.

On the door, I used construction adhesive to glue on a little brass door knob. Doesn’t it look so cute?!

Then, I used construction adhesive to attach the trim to the top of the middle drawers.

Last, I put the drawers back in the dresser. On the top of the windows, doors and shutters, there was gaps that bothered me so I caulked those.

after

And here’s how the dresser turned out! It’s not functional for toys, but it sure is cute!

The dresser looks very whimsical for the room. And it’s SO much bigger than the last dresser- it’s really nice to have so much more storage. This is a big room and I used to have lots of small pieces of room. So having bigger pieces feels better for the scale of the space.

This dresser is the second piece of dollhouse furniture I’ve made for this room. His dollhouse nightstand is still in here, but just in a different place. I LOVE that piece and believe me, I won’t be getting rid of it.

I’m so thrilled with how this looks! It’s really cute and looks so nice in here! Plus you can customize it with any color. It’d be so fun to see it in different colors for other spaces.

price breakdown

This was a bit of a more expensive project because just the dresser cost $330. Then dollhouse accessories are expensive. The doors cost $14, windows are $45, from $6, shutters $44 and the dollhouse shingles are $66. The drawer pulls cost $23. I had everything else on hand.

The grand total came to $528

So that’s how the Ikea Tarva dresser hack turned out! Do you have any questions of this project? Do you like how it turned out? I’d love to hear in the comments. I have one more dollhouse piece of furniture planned for in here, so stay tuned!