Before and After: A Secondhand Bedroom Dresser Gets a New Life as a Functional Kitchen Feature

In a kitchen, storage is crucial — but it can be hard to create that storage out of thin air. Of course, intrepid DIYers have figured it out just fine. See: these nine clever ways to instantly create more storage in kitchen, and then add this dreamy dresser-turned-kitchen peninsula to your inspiration board.

You might be thinking, ‘A dresser in the kitchen? Really?’ But DIYer Raquel Keiper proves it’s a genius idea. She found a way to add way more storage and function to her kitchen for about $300, thanks to a Facebook Marketplace find, paint, an IKEA countertop, hardware, and a little ingenuity.

“When we moved into our house, the kitchen had an awkward open space that we struggled to find a purpose for,” Raquel explains. “The kitchen is also closed off from the dining and living room, so there was nowhere for us or guests to hang out and socialize while preparing food … It drove me crazy to have a kitchen with not much flow or function. I knew I needed to find a solution that didn’t cost thousands, allowed us to have extra counter space, filled the awkward gap, and would be a central and comfortable place in the kitchen for others to gather.”

Enter: The Facebook Marketplace dresser. Raquel says Facebook Marketplace is one of her go-tos for sourcing furniture, but as with all secondhand shopping, it sometimes involves playing the long game. “It might take some patience to find the perfect [piece] for your space; consider the size you need as well of the type of drawers or cabinets you want for storing your appliances and kitchen products,” she says. Raquel notes that the piece she found had plenty of drawers and was the perfect width for the small wall in her kitchen — score! Unfortunately, height-wise, it came up short (literally).

“It took me a bit to find a solution to raise the piece,” she says. “I considered finding a taller buffet or even adding legs but eventually settled on building a frame out of 2x4s. Once the frame was built, we glued it down to the top of the buffet, and it was the perfect height, so I filled in any holes or gaps with wood filler and painted it black.” Raquel used Rust-Oleum’s Flat Black for the piece (and the matching shiplap wall behind it, too) and she replaced the old ornate hardware with long brass pulls for a more contemporary look.

For the quartz-like counter, she used a 74″ x 25″ IKEA countertop and secured it using liquid nails. “That was it!” she says. “It’s a heavy enough piece that we did not anchor it to floor in case we want to take it with us to our next home or if the next owners want to remove it.”

Raquel’s new dining peninsula plus a few decor upgrades throughout totally change the the feel and flow of the kitchen. “It has been a game changer for extra space to cook, serve food on, and have friends and family gather,” she says. “I couldn’t have asked for a better solution from both the form and functionality standpoint. The only thing I would have done differently is having done it a couple years earlier.”

Inspired? Submit your own project here.