grey bedroom | Operation Home

I’ve literally been talking about getting Lucas a new bed for years now. YEARS! The bed that we’ve been using for him was a hand-me-down gifted to us from Joey’s grandfather. It was a simple metal bed frame with a trundle bed beneath. No headboard or footboard. Useful for sure and much appreciated, but very basic….

As functional as his bed has been, I’v been craving something a bit more stylish to help set the tone for his room. A good, chunky “boy bed”.

Back when we were in the process of buying our house, my uncle graciously offered up an old bedroom set that was previously used by my cousin Bryan. It was a simple, solid wood set including bed, dresser, and nightstand. For free. Um, Sold!

We didn’t need the dresser or nightstand in Lucas’s room, so we’re utilizing them in other parts of the house. But the bed, oh the bed. It was exactly what I wanted for him in terms of style and simplicity. The only issue was the oaky tone that didn’t quite jive with my plan for his bedroom….

I was originally planning to use Polyshades to darken the wood tone. I’d assumed that the pieces were oiled or finished with something that would prevent stain from penetrating without prep. But, after a little experimentation, I realized that the wood readily accepted the stain WITHOUT a stitch of prep work!!! Total miracle, right??? (Insert victory dance, circa the Snoopy dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas.). So, with that, I proceeded to apply 2 coats of Minwax Ebony stain that I had on hand….

I left about 12 hours between coats to ensure that the first coat was dry, thus allowing the second coat to fully penetrate the wood. Then, I applied two coats of ~~my newest obsession~~ tung oil following these steps. The result was a beautiful, ebony stain with a luscious, natural looking gloss. I really love that the tung oil lends a beautiful finish without any drips or brush marks. And it’s basically foolproof!! If you can wax-on you can achieve a beautiful finish. We’re total BFFs now. Me and tung oil. Picture us twirling in a field of daisies.

Anyhoo, the bed didn’t come with hardware, so we purchased some corresponding bolts and washers from Lowes. Then, we assembled the bed and proceeded to bask in its glow of awesomeness…

I’m ecstatic about how well the bed coordinates with his dresser. In these pics, the dresser appears a bit more red-toned due to the lighting, but in person, the two pieces coordinate perfectly….

A little before and after bid-ness…

REAAAALLLYYY Before:

Before the bed (after we changed the carpet and painted)…

And now…

Sorry about the insane glare in these shots… I’m planning to retake them in better lighting soon and post them to Our House tour page, so keep an eye out for that.

Another view… Before

After:

The bed is a total game-changer for this room. It’s streamlined and masculine with bonus storage beneath! It gives the space so much style and function. Plus, the bed is lower than his last, which means he no longer needs a step-stool to get in it. I’m changing out the wood drawer handles beneath the bed for stainless knobs to mesh better with the other furniture in his room, so I’ll post a little update once that’s done. Now that the main-players of the room are in place, I can focus on wall-art, his desk area, adding curtains and otherwise fine-tuning the space to bring it full circle…. And the fun can REALLY begin!!!! (Insert crazy cackle)

Howdy, folks! I hope everyone’s Wednesday is going well and chugging right along. We’ve been busy as usual over the past week, working on some little tweaks and changes around the house (in between work and Lucas, of course), a few of which have me motivated to take on some larger organizational-type projects in the upcoming weeks. I’m pretty excited since organization is definitely not a strong-suit in our home at the moment. And it really needs to be.

Anyways, one of the aforementioned tweaks that I’m absolutely thrilled with is our new and improved, all grown-up nightstands. Ya see, I’ve wanted new nightstands for our bedroom for, oooohhh, about six years now. Ever since we were first married and moved into our first house. Up until recently, we’d been using random hand-me-down black veneered CD racks (sans legs) with a scrap of fabric laid over top. You can see them here…

After we got Drex, we realized just how sad our “nightstands” actually were. Before, it didn’t really matter. They were functional. The right height. Not entirely fugly. But once we introduced a good quality piece of furniture into the space, everything else paled in comparison. Cheap appeared cheaper.

Enter these guys from World Market…

I’ve had my eye on them for some time, but couldn’t make myself do it for full price. No. Way. Couldn’t justify it. I kept an eye out on Craigslist and thrift stores for something similar with no luck. So, imagine my delight when Joey surprised me with these lovely specimens for my birthday. Sure, it may be “our” money, but somehow it’s different when I’m not the one spending it. The Italian guilt is nil. Plus, I was psyched that he remembered my nightstand obsession and plotted to procure them behind my back. Major husband points granted.

Once I discovered my surprise, I was super excited to get these guys into our room. I carefully opened one of the boxes, expecting to be able to pull out my glorious tables and set them with instant gratification by our bedsides. But what I discovered was this….

Now, I shouldn’t have been surprised since the website stated that assembly was required. But, I figured it’d be something simple like inserting the drawers or something. I guess in my mind, for the price, the tables should not only come mostly-assembled, they should mop, do windows, and offer to babysit on date-nights.

So, I swallowed my annoyance, and got to work. Now, I’m definitely no stranger to furniture assembly. I’ve been a groupie of Ikea for years now. In fact, I quite enjoy putting furniture together for the most part. I find it therapeutic and so rewarding to see the final product take shape before my eyes. But I’m not gonna lie. These nightstands were the biggest pains in the bootie I’ve yet to encounter. There were only twelve screws that needed to be secured to attach the legs and shelf to the upper portion. That’s it. Twelve. And yet, it took me an hour and a half to assemble the first one. The issue was that they want you to use this little Allen wrench to secure the screws…

Again, normally no big deal. These are practically standard-issue at Ikea. The problem was that the locations of the screws were less than convenient….

Most of my time was spent fumbling about, trying to actually insert the wrench into the screw hole. Then, since I couldn’t fully rotate it without it hitting the corners, I had to remove the wrench after half a rotation and repeat the fumbling process countless times until the screw was secure.

I accidentally over-tightened one screw on the shelf and the wood anchor on the opposite side just popped right out…

So, I had to take the table apart (sob! All that wasted fumbling!), add wood glue, reinsert the anchor and start over…

Once I got to the second table, the holes didn’t line up on one side. One screw couldn’t be fully tightened because of this and another couldn’t be inserted AT ALL because the holes fully missed each other. I ended up having to use a random wood screw inserted through the wood to secure it.

If I had one suggestion to World Market (apart from paying closer attention to alignment) it would be to change out the Allen screws for Phillips head screws. Assembly would’ve taken a fraction of the time if I could’ve used a screwdriver or a drill.

In the end, though, all that time and effort was worth it…

I really like the Old-World feel of them and the color coordinates well with our bedding. I’m toying with the idea of painting the label holders brass to tie in with Drex, but I want to work on styling the the tables more first to see if it makes a difference. Nothing is set in stone as of yet, but I’m definitely loving them so far. They provide such great storage and much larger table surface than our cd-stands. Definitely winners. I may even forgive them for being the bane of my furniture-assembling existence! ‘Cause I’m cool like that. And they’re pretty. 😉

For fun, here’s a “before” shot taken right after I unloaded our new bedding after we moved in (the walls were actually beige, although they look more grey here)…

There’s still more to go, but we’ve definitely come a ways from the beige blank slate we started with.

So, has anybody else had issues like this with World Market stuff? I absolutely adore that store and was really surprised by this. I hope it was just a fluke and I ended up with the bad apples. Any master bedroom decor changes in your neck of the woods?

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