DIY Nightstand “Training”

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All 3 of my boys share a room. It was their choice, believe it or not and it just so happened to be a lucky choice because if they’d insisted on separate rooms, I’m not sure what we would have done ?. The bedroom is honestly not that big. Okay, it’s not big at all! When they originally moved into this room, we had a set of bunk beds and the third boy was still in a toddler bed so although it was “cozy”, it worked.

Then boy #3 outgrew his toddler bed and to quote Thomas the Train “then there was trouble”! After measuring and re-measuring and measuring again, we realized there was absolutely no way to fit another twin bed in that room. First, there would barely be enough space to crab walk between the twin bed and the bunk beds, second the dresser would have to be put in the closet to even make THAT work. They’d pretty much be able to stand at the door and jump into bed!

The solution was going up instead of out! We bought them a triple twin sized bunk bed and stacked them like Lays potato chips! ?. That being said we have 3 boys in one room. Can you picture all the cars and trucks and trains and planes and….??? Storage is an absolute must in this room!

Enter the little nightstand that is now proudly residing in the boys train themed room! I purchased it for $12 at Goodwill. The MR told me I was nuts, which isn’t all that unusual. I guess it looked particularly pitiful to him at the time but it was solid and the drawers slid smoothly and that’s all I need! I’ve honestly seen much worse ?

Luckily you can’t see all the blobs and drips and downright icky things that were part of the paint job that was on it when I bought it! I did leave in some of the lovely surroundings in my garage where I worked on this piece – you’re welcome! I know you envy my workshop! ?

The funny thing is, after starting to sand it all down to something resembling a flat, smooth surface, I started exposing red paint under the dark brown. What’s funny about that? Well to offset all the blue in the boys room, I had already decided to paint this a dark red and then top it off with either a dark brown or very dark gray! ??

I actually used spray paint for this step because I just happened to have some left from a different project that was the perfect deep red color!

I primed the inside of the drawers with a stain blocking primer and then painted two coats of a soft white semi-gloss for easy washability and to cover the stains and blobs and boy stuff that was inside these drawers originally! ?

I topped it off with one good coat of a very dark brown (Behr Sweet Molasses) and once it had dried I sanded it back to expose quite a lot of the red. Since this piece was done with regular latex paints, I did not feel the need to use any sort of wax or poly over top. Once the paint had cured, I used a removable train decal to dress it up a little and installed some new hardware. The great thing about the decal is that when the boys are too old for the playfulness of this design, I can simply remove the decal in seconds and voila! its still a great piece to carry them all the way thru to their dorm rooms at College! ?.

This piece now holds all sorts of random little boy treasures and the best part is it’s short enough that even the littlest can reach what’s on top ?

Happy creating!