Bedside Tables – Finally, This Project Has Legs!

It took a lot longer than I hoped, but I’m thrilled to finally share my bedside tables with you today!  I’m glad to have this project done (but mostly glad to stop thinking about hanger bolts).

It has been a long time coming.  For over two years, we’ve been living with temporary nightstands in the bedroom.  Here is the room before we started the makeover:

The blue one is an IKEA purchase for my first apartment out of college, and the other has been hanging around since my freshman year college dorm!  They provided a lot of storage, but really didn’t fit the color scheme and made an odd pair.  They are also narrow and tall, and so were inconvenient to reach from the bed.

Even my best attempts to style them to look worthy of being in a DIY blog were only passable.

So, a top priority in this bedroom makeover is new bedside tables.  What is a blogger to do?  A RAST hack, of course!

JUST KIDDING.  This is not a RAST hack.  Please don’t leave.

For the new tables, I was looking for something pretty specific.  I wanted a matching pair, since we’ve hung shelves on one side and so will want most of the other major elements to be symmetrical.   I also wanted something lower and wider, so it would be easier to reach from the bed and would better fill the space.  Finally, a big priority was picking up a ton of storage.  Right now, Brad keeps his stuff in the closet and dresser in the bedroom, and I have a whole other room for my clothes and other things.  In the (distant) future, we may have “other uses” for the other bedrooms, and so will need to fit all of our clothes into this one.  It’s not a big space (there is really only room for a single dresser, two bedside tables, and potentially a small bench at the end of the bed) so having these be able to double as mini-dressers will be a big bonus.

However, finding something with the exact right dimensions proved to be pretty tough.  I stalked craigslist for way too long hoping that I’d be lucky enough for the perfect pair to show up, but they didn’t materialize.  I also checked all my favorite decor stores (looking at you, West Elm) but there wasn’t anything exactly right at a price I was willing to pay.

This is where I usually just keep looking and waiting for the perfect thing (and end up living with the same inconvenient, temporary bedside tables for years…).  But I’ve given myself a charge to actually finish decorating this room, so I set out to find something else that could work and fit my very specific dimensions.  I tried everywhere – IKEA, of course, but also places like the Container Store and kitchen cabinets at home improvement stores.  Finally, I found these beauties from Home Depot:

Admittedly, they’re not quite my style, but the price was decent, they have a ton of storage, and I liked the modern box shape and the detail of the stripe and hardware.  Most importantly, the dimensions of the main body were perfect!  I planned to paint the body and swap out the legs for nice wood ones.  The Advisory Council (a.k.a., Brad) was dubious, but in the face of my resolve decided that this wasn’t a battle worth fighting.  I bought a pair within a day.

They arrived in two flat boxes, where they sat for a while before I finally got around to working on them.  There were a ton of pieces.  This is just for one of them:

Before assembly, I took the opportunity to give them a good sanding.  I brought them down to the garage for the electric sander, and then touched up the edges and hard to reach places by hand.

Assembly wasn’t terrible – it took maybe an hour and a half to do both of them.  I find assembly of flat-packed furniture to be therapeutic, so it was a pretty good time.

After that, I just primed and painted them a clean white (Chantilly Lace) in my favorite paint for furniture, Advance by Benjamin Moore.

My goal was to have the new bedside tables height be just under the ledge of the windowsill, and that meant that I could add a 6″ leg to the existing body.  I picked up eight legs and the installation hardware from tablelegs.com (I chose the McCobb Mid Century Modern Foot).  Of course, this is when I made my terrible error not to pay a mere $1.50/leg to have the hanger bolts installed for me, thus embarking on a regrettable month-long journey of drill failures and confusion to get them in correctly (part 1 // part 2).

However, once the hanger bolts were in, and the legs were stained a Golden Pecan and coated with a semi-gloss poly, I couldn’t be happier with them!

And, fortunately, the rest of the installation was easy.

It was definitely a longer road than the project should have taken, but I’m thrilled with the end result!

They fit the space perfectly and the width and height are so much more convenient from the bed.  There is enough breathing room on either side so they don’t feel crammed in, but I don’t feel like I am wasting storage space by having them be too narrow.

Sorry to be showing them un-styled, but, as you know, I am still shopping for the accessories and have a lot more to do on this room.  (However, you can catch a sneak peak of the new rug and bedding in these photos!)

I really love the details.  The line across the front of the drawers adds just a little something, and the black hardware ties into the brackets on the bookshelves and the (ill-fated) wall grates.  And, of course, the legs are perfect.

I can’t wait to finish the room so I can show them fully styled.  They really make a huge difference in making the space feel a lot more finished, already.

I’m thrilled to get to cross this project off the list.  I’ve been feeling very behind (I mean, Sage has demolished half her kitchen already…) but I’ve actually gotten a few things done in this room!

• Hang shelves in the corner
• Buy and/or DIY matching bedside tables (ideally with loads of dresser-like storage)
• Buy and/or DIY a bench for the end of the bed (ideally with storage)
• Buy a new rug and bedding
• Install new overhead light
• Decide between lamps or scones for beside the bed, and buy/install (<– Thanks for your advice – update soon!)
• Buy and/or DIY several pieces of art for the walls
• Hang window treatments
• Fix gaping hole in the wall by installing grate
• Finally paint wood window sashes

Sharing at Create It Thursday, Home Matters, Two Uses Tuesday, The Creative Gallery, and Idea Box.