Kaitlyn has been wanting to find a new nightstand for quite a while.  Everything that she has found has just been too short and too ordinary for her height and taste.  She has been looking for something that has a retro feel with some originality in color and design.

A while back, she brought me an old maple nightstand that she had found on someone’s curb.  It had good bones in that it was in pretty good shape and had lovely wood details. The drawer had some damage, but had a built-in metal drawer pull.  The piece was a bit rickety and was a few inches too short to match the height of the beds in the bedroom.

This is basically what the nightstand looked like without the drawer:

I had purchased a hand sander last summer when I refinished two armoires for Michelle and Leah’s bedrooms.   It cost about $20 and is one of those indispensable tools for furniture refinishing. For this project, I also purchased foam brushes, metallic gold paint and I used a small can of mahogany stain that I had left from refinishing my sewing machine cabinet a few summers ago.

I spent about twenty minutes sanding all the surfaces with a hand sander.  I then wiped the sanded surfaces with a damp towel and let the surface dry.

With  1″ and 3″ foam brushes, I carefully applied Minwax mahogany stain to all the surfaces of the nightstand.  I used a small paintbrush to thin the paint out in the thin decorative recesses of the nightstand.  I applied about 3 coats of stain.

I covered the metallic drawer pull with painters tape and spray painted the drawer with metallic gold paint .

I found some unfinished screw-in finials at Lowes to add height and interest to the bottom of the square legs of the nightstand:

I spray painted the tops and bottoms of the finials with metallic gold paint , being careful to keep the screws from getting painted.

Aaron drilled a hole in the bottom of each leg and then screwed the painted finials into them.

Voila!

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