Welcome to my little blog about our semi-detached house that is located in the Upper Beach neighbourhood of Toronto. My name Lindsay, I'm a stationery designer, Mom, and the decorating obsessed partner of Aubrey. This blog documents as we renovate, I decorate, find inspiration, and now, live with our newest member of the family - Oscar. Click here to read more about us. Photo by Tynan Studio. Thursday, September 24, 2009 In September 2008, I was looking for side tables for our bedroom. At the time we didn't even have a couch , so dropping a lot of money on bedside tables wasn't something that we could do. I was flipping through my September 2008 Style at Home Magazine and I came across a bedroom shot and in the corner of a page I spotted a bedside table that was PERFECT. When I quickly flipped to the source of the table (expecting to be yet-again dissapointed by cost) I saw that they were Ikea RAST side tables. Seriously? Ikea? They had made over the Ikea Rast tables, and although there weren't instructions on how to do the project, I decided to try my hand at recreating the tables myself. I got these.... and the bedside tables turned out like so.... Here is what we did to make them look "un" Ikea. 1.) First you need to pick up a RAST table. We bought 2, one for each side of the bed. 2.) We assembled the tables, except for the drawers. 3.) Doing the drawers - I primed the fronts of the doors and then painted them in oil Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore. I had Chantilly lace left over from painting all of our trim in our house, and I really liked the warm white. 4.) Staining - I found it easier to stain the piece fully built, instead of piece by piece so I stained the "body" of the table in Antique Brown by Duraseal (this was the floor colour, left over from when we installed new floors.) I did 1 coat, as I didn't want the side tables to look too dark. I think the lighter the tone, the more modern it looks. UPDATE: Any stain, waterbased or not will work, we just like