West Elm Design + IKEA ODDA + PANYL = 90% Savings

November 13, 2012

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Recently, someone forwarded me a West Elm newsletter featuring their new "patchwork" dresser and said it reminded them of PANYL.

It was time to do a PANYLed knockoff.  I already had a $99 IKEA ODDA 3-drawer chest with a large bottom drawer (46"w x 11"h) and two upper drawers (one 30"w and the other 15"w, both 8"h).  

To mimic the West Elm piece I needed contrasting wood tones and a mixture of vertical and horizontal grain direction. 

After removing the drawer handles I held different PANYL pieces up to the drawer fronts until I found the ones that best mimicked West Elm's piece.  I wound up with Ebony (our newest woodgrain finish) on the bottom, Dark Walnut on the upper left and Pale Oak on the upper right.  Before putting them on I causally trimmed the pieces down with scissors leaving roughly a half inch extra on each side.  

After firmly applying the PANYLs to the drawer fronts I spent a few seconds creasing the portion that hung over each edge at a 45 degree angle.  I didn't want any PANYL to stick to the drawer sides but I did want a very pronounced crease in the PANYL so that it would be easy to trim away the excess edge material with a cutting blade (I used a NT Pro snap-blade knife).  In so doing I could achieve a perfectly flush look.

As I was going to put the black metal handles back on, a colleague suggested I wrap them with brushed-gold PANYL, a great final hijack of the original West Elm piece!  Ironically, it took almost fifteen minutes to wrap all four handles while the three drawers themselves had only taken ten altogether!  

The West Elm piece is listed for $1199 and the IKEA ODDA costs $99.  I used roughly $50 worth of PANYL bringing the hijacked piece in at one eighth of the price.  After just 30 minutes of work/fun these two pieces could occupy the same room and no one would be the wiser.

The moroal of this story is that pre-cut PANYL products, make for convenient IKEA customization, but they aren't necessary to get the most out of PANYL.  With a sharp craft knife and the right choice of surface, there are very few things standing between you and a  PANYLed, one-of-a-kind piece of furniture.