it's 4:45 in the afternoon, also known as when i'm a waste of space

so let's take this opportunity to talk about something really awesome that i made.

keen insight: ikea both sucks so much and is so great at the exact same time. i recently moved to los angeles (more on that another time) and i tried really hard to avoid ikea. because i'm a grown-up now, with a salary, and i should buy my things from west elm and pottery barn.

but then i started browsing ikea hack sites on pinterest. i won't bother posting any here because there are so many and i don't want to take attention away from the one i'm going to show you that i made.

first i bought this dresser (except in white...somehow i can't find a picture of a white one online). in case you're wondering, it's the three-drawer hemnes:

before i even got it home, i went to target. fun fact, target now sells wallpaper. and paint! i don't care how long they've been doing this, i just figured it out so it only just became important. there are so many great wallpapers. i'm not sure how i settled on this one...i think it's because i already have a lot of chevrons in my room decor and didn't want to overdo it. this one has the same angles but mixes it up a bit, plus the color is lovely:

i also bought a set of new knobs, because i'm no longer on a graduate student stipend so i can do things like that.

with the help of some wine, bollywood music, and my new roommate, the dresser became assembled. BUT: before i put the knobs in, i covered the face of each drawer with this wallpaper (pro tip: it's removable and repositionable. that was really important). it's like adhering any other vinyl...you have to be careful of air bubbles and all those things. but overall it's remarkably simple.

then, i used a little awl to poke holes in the wallpaper where the knobs should be (not hard, since the dresser already had space for knobs so it was just a matter of finding them through the paper). instead of using the ikea knobs, i used my own, and VOILA:

i'm so proud. i thought about putting the wallpaper on the top too, but took the coco chanel approach and decided that would be overboard. i have a lot of the wallpaper left over, so i'm excited to see what else i can use it for...i'm thinking so far about using it to line the shelves in my bathroom...and then see where it goes from there!