I have a new IKEA Tarva in my possession. It is awesome and it might possibly be the best of both IKEA worlds. I'm talking Malm and Rast had a baby. It is big like Malm, but made of wood like Rast so you can paint the holy hell out of it. It is also 20x better constructed than Rast. I approve.
This finish works best on raw wood, but if you want to do it on a painted surface I recommend not adding water to your paint in this first step.
#1- Mix up a 1 part water, 2 parts paint (Grayish brown- I used C2- Barnacle, it was left over from my office walls.) Don't use a Semi- Gloss finish- you want matte or eggshell.
#2 Brush it over the entire piece. Go with the grain, and move quickly so you don't get a lot of overlapping brush marks.
You don't want it to be too heavy, you should still see some wood grain. ( If you are doing this over a painted surface, you will want to make sure you have decent coverage and the old color isn't visible.)
#4 Add 1 part white to remaing paint and repeat. You are progressively getting lighter with each step, and leaving darker streaks from underneath...
I added some mother of pearl knobs my Mom found for me at Homegood's...
And then I had to test out some new "Fiona" O'verlays that were sized for the Tarva.
(P.S. 15% off O'verlays with coupon code YOURMOM15, good til 5/15/12).
These were spray painted with Krylon "Nickel" and then dry brushed with the last batch of paint.