Our Nightstands & DIY Leather Drawer Pulls

As we started planning the bedroom reveal, our main goal was to add storage.  The room isn’t huge, so I knew we had to maximize storage in our nightstands.  I’m usually all for mis-matching furniture pieces.  But since we had so much pattern going on in here, I really thought some simpler, matching nightstands were the way to go.

After no luck at thrift stores, I got two MALM nightstands from IKEA.  

We have an IKEA dresser and it is one of my favorite pieces of furniture.  It has such deep drawers that work great and that was our goal here.  I like the simple, modern lines of these, but wanted to do something to spruce up the front.  

For me, every room needs a grounding, natural element that’s either wood or leather.  This room didn’t have that yet and it really needed it with the floral wallpaper.  I had a leather remnant from Leather Hide Store that I’ve been waiting to find a project for.  Here’s how I made them:

I wanted something really easy, but also something large that would make more of a statement on the plan nightstands.  These couldn’t have been easier!

Materials:

Leather remnant

Drill

Hardware (you need two of each below for each drawer):

-Brass Screws

-Brass Finish Washers

-Plain Washers

-Nuts for the Back

Here’s a photo of the hardware we used:

Make sure that all four are the same diameter.  We used #10.

STEP 1: Drill Holes

I cut several strips of leather and held them up to decide on the look I wanted.  I ended up going six inches from each end (horizontally) and four inches from the top (that’s the halfway point of each drawer’s height).  Find the cross point on each drawer’s end and draw a dot.

Once you’ve measured and marked each drawer, drill your holes.

STEP 2: Cut Strips of Leather

I wanted my leather strips to be one inch longer than each hole and you want the leather to have a little give and room to pull.  So, I cut my leather strips 1 1/4″ longer on each end than the holes.   

You can see the leather naturally has some give to it, so a “perfect” line may not look that way.  But I love that it doesn’t look perfect and completely uniform.  You could use leather belts if you were hoping for a perfect edge with no ripple anywhere.

STEP 3: Cut Holes in Leather

I held up each strip to the drawers and using scissors put a little notch where the hole is.  Then, folded the strip and cut a small hole from the back.

STEP 4: Attach Leather and Hardware

Now comes the fun part!  To attach the leather strips to the drawers, first place a finish washer on your screw.

And then place that through the hole in the leather and through the hold in the drawer.

Once it’s through the drawer, place a plain washer and then a nut on the back of the screw (inside the drawer) and screw the nut tightly in place.  Attach it on both sides and you’re finished!

I love they ground and add some real character to our nightstands!

Here’s the budget breakdown for this project:

Nightstand – $79 each (our total was $160 for both)

Leather – already had this leather stored for a project, but if purchased new would be around $50 for a hide

Hardware – $15

TOTAL: $175 for both nightstands and hardware

Now that’s a price I can get behind!