Nightstand Makeover

One of my favorite hobbies has become furniture restoration. I love taking pieces that seem broken, ugly, and unwanted to most people and turning them into their full potential. A few years ago, I bought a coffee table for $5 at a yard sale and refinished it. Since then, I have refinished almost every piece of furniture that is now in my house.

Today I am going to share a piece that I recently did for a friend of my mom's. This was a nightstand that she wanted to use in her daughter's room, and she wanted it painted yellow and distressed. I tried to take as many photos along the way as possible, but they were taken with my phone, so sorry for the poor quality! In my next post, I will go into specifics on distressing furniture...for now, I will give a brief step-by-step on the whole process. (These tips are for solid wood furniture only)

Here's what I started with:

Step 1: Sand down to original wood.

Step 2: Do your first coat of paint on the entire piece. (I did not take a picture of this step. Sorry!)

Step 3: Distressing. Using either a power sander (I used a power sander with a 150 fine sanding disc) or a sanding block, sand down the edges and corners of the piece. I like to think about where the piece would naturally be distressed from use over time, which is typically the edges and corners. If you'd like to add more distressing to the tops and sides, you can! This part is totally up to you.

Step 4: Using a wood stain pen, stain the areas of the original wood that show through after sanding. This will bring out the richness of the wood and will help the distressed portions to stand out.

Step 5: Add a layer of oil-based polyurethane (I used MiniWax Oil-Based Polyurethane) to the piece to avoid nicking or scraping of the paint. This will help protect it from unwanted wear and tear. For a piece like this nightstand, I only coated the top with polyurethane because it is the main area of use.

To add a more updated look, I replaced the older knobs with cup pulls for the bottom drawer and a simple black knob for the top. I bought all of the hardware at Lowes.

And here are before and after photos:

And there you have it! The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is no right or wrong way to do it-let your creativity flow and go with what you think will look best!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!