nightstand | Operation Home

You guys. I painted furniture. And I’m here to admit. It felt good. Reeealllyyyyy. Good.

Ever since we moved into our house, we’ve been mainly focused on larger projects. Taking care of major surfaces. Correcting wrongs that needed to be righted. Floors. Walls. Windows. Front doors. Pool resurfacing. Rotted wall fixing. Roof repair. Basically, trying to set the stage so that we CAN decorate and do it right. I mean, sure, some decor has crept in there, but it just hasn’t been the main focus yet in the way it was with our last house. A new construction with no major issues… Thus, decor was really the ONLY focus then. I feel like we’re getting slowly there, though. Slowly. And happily. 🙂

But… BUT… I painted furniture, y’all.

I feel like it’s been forever since I did that.

And it didn’t disappoint.

Ya see, I hit up a local antique mall last weekend and found this beaut of a nightstand…

I’m sorry about this picture. Somehow in my excitement to make over this badboy, this was the ONLY sad ‘before’ pic that I took. Oopsie. As you can see, I thought he would work well in the guest room to replace his dumpier predecessor. His leggy profile made the space feel lighter which was totally my goal.

I have to say that I was so excited when I found him. The antique mall that I purchased him from tends to be a bit of a pricier one, but I thought I’d check it out anyways since it was close to home. So, when I stumbled upon this little guy and a glance at his price tag revealed that he was only $29 (!!!), I pretty much sprinted to the cashier. He was in need of some love, but sturdy. A perfect find for me.

Now, when it comes to wood, many of you may know that I’m usually a purist. Especially with antique furniture. I like keeping wood-toned things wood to be true to the piece. That is, unless the finish is damaged beyond repair or super ugly. And in this case, the finish was uber fugly. For real. I’m sorry. It just was. The lines of the nightstand were retro. The finish… dated. It’s hard to tell from my blurry before picture, but it was a red mahogany tone. But not good mahogany. Fake, bright red mahogany. And really, really glossy. But, damaged in spots also. Some scratches and chips. Wrinkling in the finish. The whole chebang. And it clashed with… well, pretty much every other wood tone I have in the house.

So, I decided to paint it. (Gasp! I KNOW!!!)

I gave it a light sanding with a fine grade sanding block, then wiped it down with some liquid deglosser to ensure a nice dull surface that would better accept paint…

I wiped it down with tack cloth (which decided to photobomb in the right-hand corner). You’re welcome for that. 😉

Then, I gave it two thin and even coats of Valspar’s paint+primer semi-gloss in Ebony Field (leftover from when I painted the back door in our last house).

I sanded lightly with an extra fine sanding block between coats and wiped it down again with my BFF, tack cloth. And then I let it cure for a few days before moving it.

Now, let’s move on to the brass accents and hardware. I sort of worked on them throughout the process, so you’ll see some pics from before and after painting the table. The knobs weren’t in the greatest shape…

That wasn’t just tarnish. The brass coating seemed to have worn away with time. Because of this, I doubted that I could rejuvenate them as is. I wanted them to sort-of match the leg accents, although I knew it wouldn’t likely be a perfect match. First, I tried spray painting them with some leftover Rustoleum Universal in Pure Gold…

But, the results when compared to the leg accents looked really plastic-y…

Not exactly what I was going for.

So, I decided to try a new product. I’d read about Rub n’ Buff on several blogs and was intrigued. Apparently, you simply rub it on to achieve a metallic sheen. So, I ordered a tube on Amazon for just under $7…

The directions recommended rubbing a small amount onto your surface with a finger or a soft cloth. So, I started with the legs.

Which is when I started talking to myself.

Which despite popular belief, means only good things.

“Holy WOW!!!”,

“Geez! This stuff is amazeballs!”,

“Where have you been all my life??”.

All *may* have escaped my lips as I astoundedly rubbed the magical solution on. This beautiful stuff covered imperfections almost instantaneously with just a tiny amount and gave a gorgeous metallic sheen that I’ve yet to find with paint.

Here’s a before…

And after…

I probably should’ve taped off the leg, but it’s nothing a little touch-up paint couldn’t cure. That brass piece literally took me all of 15 seconds to do. I completed all four legs and then treated the knobs as seen in this “after” shot…

Metallic and lovely.

And what do ya know…. They ended up matching perfectly after all. The knobs look a bit “rosy” here, but in person they’re definitely more of a gold. I can’t attest to how well Rub n’ Buff wears, but I’ll keep y’all updated. In any case, it was such a quick fix, that I’m sure I can handle re-treating the metal accents as needed.

And here’s the table in it’s entirety…

I chose to simply accessorize with a cute lamp (found at Marshall’s a while back), some books, a shot of me and Lucas when he was only 18 hours old, and one of my easy mirrored planters (which are still rockin’ it, BTW). This guy was in our bedroom atrium and wasn’t getting adequate light, so I moved him. I’ll have an atrium update soon since I’ve been an accessorizing fool as of late. Actually, I’ll have a lot of updates soon. I’ve been a busy bee this weekend. 😉

Anyhoo, back to the point. Here’s a view of the room from the doorway as it stands now…

So, that’s my little painting project this week. Like I said, I’ve got more in store including a few breakfast nook, living room and atrium updates as well as the results of moving our fence. Joey and his dad are hard at it out there and it’s looking awesome. So, have a great rest of your weekend! Until next time…

*** For updated pics of this space, check out this (adding a new awesome $12 lamp) and this (creating DIY burlap wall art).***

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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