One Nightstand. Three Ways. Four Dollars.

Weird title? Yup. Fitting for yours truly. In case you didn’t already think I was totally insane, this post ought to do the trick.

We have lovely furniture in our master bedroom. It was our first “grown up” bedroom furniture when we got married. Not your $20 yard sale finds. Nope. Solid, heavy, espresso-finish, expensive(ish) wood. Attractive, yes. Anything wrong with it? No.

So clearly I had to change all that.

‘Cuz that’s how I roll.

I mean, it’s a bedroom set. And I’m not about the sets anymore. I want everything to look collected over time, a mix of this and that. Sets are a popular choice for many, and perfect for a lot of people.

Just not me.

Here’s where I praise my husband once again for having the patience of a saint when it comes to my crazy decorating ideas.

“Hey hon, I have a feeling you might say no to this one, but how would you feel about me painting some of our bedroom furniture?”

“Go ahead.”

“Really?!”

“Sure.”

“I was thinking a turquoise/teal color.”

“Fine by me.”

I’ll say it again. No man could ever put up with my shenanigans like this guy! (I think as long as I do all the work, he’s cool with anything;)

So I have this vision. Somehow making our matching nightstands and two dressers look different from one another. Knobs will be changed up, each piece having it’s own look. Perhaps even keeping one of the dressers the same (which would look different from all the other pieces, so it would be cool with me). I fell madly in love with the color Surfer by Sherwin Williams (which I picked up when they had their sale, so it only cost about 4 bucks), and thought it would rock on the nightstands. Sure, they’d still look the same as each other, but at least they wouldn’t match the other dressers in the room, so I thought it would work.

Here’s how the nightstands looked originally, on Saturday morning….

Fine. But dark. Plus, they’re 7 years old now, I was getting the itch. (At least that’s how I justify painting perfectly good furniture;)

So I mixed up some paint and plaster of paris (don’t I always?!). I like to save old tupperware for these projects. I just pour some paint in it, and add a couple spoonfuls of plaster, mix it all up and slap it on the furniture. No priming, no sanding, nuthin.’ I love it.

After I mixed it up, I laid a dropcloth down and got to work…

Took 2 (maybe 3) coats.

Then I took some gold spray paint that I had, took the knobs outside, and gave them a quick coat of gold. Thought they’d really stand out a lot better.

And they were done!

(Please pardon all the junk around it, I’m about halfway done the bedroom and there’s STUFF every.where. That’s why I’m only showing the nightstand for now;)

So here I have these two GORGEOUS nightstands. The color, to die for. And yet…something wasn’t quite right. Paul loved them. And I did too…but I didn’t at the same time.

Told ya I was crazy.

It’s like I have this vision in my head, and it wasn’t quite accomplished.

I lived with them for 2 days, and just when I was about to apply the wax step to seal the deal (ha! literally;), it hit me like a ton of bricks.

THESE are not supposed to be my bold statement pieces.

My big dresser is! I realized the matchy-ness of them, the fact that they were in front of my already bold orange print curtains…it just felt too harsh, too much. I’m all about color in this room, but not HIT YOU IN THE FACE. And this color needs to stand alone. And alone it would stand on my dresser, along my off-white, totally neutral wall.

Yes, the nightstands that I JUST painted needed to be white. Yup.

Oy.

So I drop the kids at school, come home and mix up some white paint and plaster. You would think I didn’t have a bajillionty-and-one things to do right now.

I slapped it right over the gorgeous Surfer paint (which was somewhat painful I must say). It took 3 good coats, but as soon as I put them in place under the orange curtains, I knew it was right. I also had some glass knobs leftover from a large pack I bought (when I did the little table in our family room). I went with them and decided to do the gold knobs on the dresser when I paint that the bold color.

And here it is.

Ahhhhh….I’m happy now:)

Isn’t it funny how something that you think will be so right can turn out so wrong? As much as I didn’t feel like painting them AGAIN, I decided the extra work right now would be worth it, rather than living with something that just wasn’t the look I was trying to achieve.

Am I crazy? You betcha. Hope you can find it in your decorating hearts to love me anyway;)

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