Freaking finally. This project ended up being quite a bit more of a headache than we had originally anticipated, but it is done and I am in love.
When we left off (see part 1 here), we had nightstands that had gone from this…
to this:
And we had a bit of a cliffhanger with this:
There were a ton of fun guesses as to what we were doing with the paint, from adding chevrons (love!), to painting the legs, to painting the top. But what did we actually do?
The cubby! As soon as I saw the cubby on these guys when we first bought them at the garage sale, I knew I wanted to paint it something fun. We went back and forth on what parts of the cubby to paint – just the bottom? The bottom and sides? Just the sides? But in the end we decided it was easiest and looked the best to just do the whole thing.
To achieve this color, I just mixed a bit of our bedroom wall color with some white paint we had laying around, and I got what’s basically just a lighter version of our walls. I had no idea if we’d actually like it once we put it in the room, but I figured we love our wall color so it couldn’t go too badly!
Once the paint was all finished, it was time for the spray lacquer. I had never used it before, and we bought a brand that we had also never used before (Valspar). The Valspar cans don’t have the easy (and messy) trigger that the new Rustoleum cans have, so I used my add-on nozzle to make my life a little easier. Corey and I bought this thing on a whim at Home Depot a few months back and I cannot say enough good things about it. It just snaps right on the top of your spray paint can and makes your life about a million times easier. Go get one – you’ll never look back!
I waited the recommended amount of time for the paint to dry, then I excitedly started spraying the lacquer on (after thoroughly reading the instructions, of course). And guess what happened?
This is about the point that I started furiously cursing at the nightstands and stormed back inside, declaring that I was never going to touch spray paint again.
I might get a bit dramatic sometimes.
We’re still not exactly sure what caused the problem, but in several spots all over one of the nightstands (yes, just one of them), the paint cracked horribly. It also cracked on the faces of both the drawers. I didn’t take many photos because I was so angry, but I did a bit of online research and found at least one other person who had the same problem with Valspar’s spray lacquer, so I think it might just be a brand thing. No matter what caused it, I was not a happy camper.
Once the lacquer had dried completely, it was time to sand it down and start over.
We re-sprayed white on all of the spots that had been sanded down, and we decided to forgo the spray lacquer on this nightstand for now. You can’t tell a difference between the one with and the one without (we used glossy white spray paint, so they’re both nice and shiny anyways) and these won’t see a ton of wear and tear since we’ll just be setting our phones on them at night and maybe a book or two. But we plan to keep a close eye on them and if we start to see any damage to the paint we’ll be adding some polyurethane for extra protection.
Once the nightstands were officially done, I turned my attention to the drawer pulls. We both really liked the pulls that had come with the nightstands, and we loved that they were mis-matched.
I kind of wanted to leave them as-is, because I loved the aged gold finish, but Corey had to sand them down a bit because there was a bunch of residue on them from whatever finish had previously been applied to the nightstands. As a result, they were very scratched up (as you can see) and they just didn’t look right left alone.
So I busted out the spray paint.
We argued back and forth for a while on what color we would paint the pulls, and in the end Corey’s vote won out.
We think we’ll try to find some similar, mis-matched drawer pulls at a thrift store sometime in the future because I think the gold look is probably going to look the best on these guys. But for now, the purple sure is fun!
As soon as the drawer pulls were dry, it was time to bring these babies to their new home!
They are so much smaller than our old nightstands, which we love. You can barely even see them in this photo, but it shows how much room they opened up for us on the sides of our bed. We’ll eventually be adding something to one side and possibly even shifting the bed a little, but for now we love the extra space in the room!
We still need to figure out exactly what will live in those little cubbies, but for now I tossed a few things in there so they weren’t sad and empty.
For me, a few books – since I’m always reading in bed, anyways!
And for Corey, our West Elm owls.
Please excuse the cords on Corey’s side of the bed – we’re currently brainstorming a solution to get them out of the way, because I am oh so sick of looking at them!
We’re pretty thrilled with how the nightstands turned out, and we love the impact they make in the room. This room is still a long way from finished, but we feel like it’s slowly starting to come together and feel a lot more “us”.
Just so you can get an idea of how the room will end up, here are just a few of the items still on our bedroom to-do list:
- Sand down, paint, and reupholster our bed and headboard
- Get some art for above the bed
- Replace the cheap straight-out-of-our-college-apartments Ikea lamps (hopefully we’ll have an update for you on that soon!)
- Do some furniture re-arranging in order to add in a small lounge area with a chair or a chaise
And oh so much more. But the nightstands are definitely a good start!
I have to say – Corey was pretty skeptical when I first showed him my iPhone photo of these little nightstands, but I’m glad I talked him into trusting me and letting me try them out, and I think he is too!
Have you ever turned a garage sale find into something fabulous?
(Edited to add: I’m linking up to Addicted 2 Decorating’s Addicts (Not So) Anonymous link party! Check it out here!)
