Keith Novak

After following thinking it over for many months, and reading multiple guides on how to do this, I have finally motivated myself to create some studio rack furniture using the Ikea Rast nightstand.

I would like to point out, because it is not stated clearly (or at all) in other posts: To mount the rails to the Nightstand, you will need to use 1/2″ wood screws. This is because the thickness of the wood is only 3/4″ inch. I found most other guides to be lacking in pointing this out, and I actually bought the wrong screws at first.

Sources for this post include Kenneth Ballard’s write up, as well as this Instructables post, and this Reddit.com post. I differed slightly in that I mounted the 6U rack rails on top, but I also mounted 2U rails separately in the middle. There are guides that show you how to use the whole nightstand as an 8U rack, I essentially just did it the hard way.

The 4 step  guide is:

1. Buy everything you need (1/2″ wood screws {I bought a 100 pack}, rack rails {6U, unless you plan on modifying the Rast build or stacking two}, one or two Ikea Rast nightstands, and if you are stacking two, some mending brackets)
2. Build the Rast nightstands. This is an easy step.
3. Stack the two nightstands and connect them using the mending brackets – I also used velcro in between the two to further secure it, although this seems like overkill in highsight. Alternately, if you are only building one, skip this step.
4. Mount the rack rails wherever you intend on mounting them.

If I were to do this again, some things to consider:

• Stain the wood to make it look a bit nicer
• Attach some handles to make moving this a bit easier
• Attach some casters to the bottom to make this a mobile rig