Nightstand

About the same time I was deep into the frame project, I started getting really frustrated with the little table thing that I was using for a nightstand.It was basically six boards screwed together, painted and then scuffed up enough to make it seem antique. It wasn’t particularly well made, and didn’t hold up well when Heather dealt with the issue of it being a bit short by piling seven or eight large books on top of it. Wobbly and too small more or less sums up the problems.

At that point I thought, “hey, I have a saw, and at least six boards, I should try making a better one!”

So I cut some boards:

Cutting the groves for the bottom shelf was considerably trickier than I was expecting, but the results were serviceable at least. What I had there was a table that was structurally sound, but wasn’t ever going to pass inspection with Heather to gain entry into our bedroom.

Step two, use some of this extra trim to make the table a little fancier:

A little trim, a little putty, and a lot of sanding and my little table was starting to look promising! All it needed now was a coat of “Heather and Jordan standard black” and it will blend right in! I got somewhat lucky in that it was an incredibly nice weekend, and Heather was away being the guest of honor at her (our?) first baby shower. This left me plenty of time to sand and paint.

There it is, ready for inspection… and it passed! 🙂

After moving a few large stacks of books, there was even a place for it:

As you can see, it even matches the other items in our bedroom! I came to appreciate again the brilliance of Heather’s “buy second hand stuff and repaint it” system, because if I had needed to stain that piece… well there is a lot of putty involved in making that look finished that wouldn’t have really stained correctly. Paint however, paint is forgiving as long as you are willing to do enough sanding. 🙂

-Jordan