Nightstand Chronicles: Part II

Major work has begun on the first nightstand that will go in our currently sad guest room.  I removed the doors, casters and other hardware and primed the base with the spray version Zinsser's Cover Stain Oil-Base Primer.  Then I painted it with Sherwin Williams Duration in Greek Villa (the same color I used on my other nightstand).  It looks great!

I really wanted to remove the metal grating and blue plexiglass from the doors, so I put my husband to work on that project.  

The blue plexiglass was just duct taped on (nice!) so that was easy enough to remove, but the metal grating was sandwiched into the door, so our Dremel tool got a nice workout removing a thin strip of wood from the back side of the door to allow the grate to be removed.  We got a thin board of birch veneer to replace the grate with a solid panel and some trim to mask the crazy edges left by the Dremel.  We're both still learning how to use power tools, so our edges aren't entirely straight.  On the left you can see what it will look like from the front (still needs to be primed and painted) and on the right you can see how the birch panel fits into the back before we added the trim to mask the edges.  

I think this ended up being a great fix to update the doors!  As an alternative on the second nightstand, I might just leave the doors off (so it will look like the top photo).  What do you think?  Doors on or off on nightstand #2?

Next up on this project:

1. Finishing the doors - trim, priming, and painting
2. Hardware - I had a little setback with polishing the brass (which I'll tell you all about) so I need to shop for some hardware)
3. Casters?  The old casters have seen better days and honestly I don't think that they are really appropriate for hardwood floors.  So I might leave the off (taking the easy way out) or I am considering ordering new casters with rubber edges that won't ding up the floors.  I love casters just as much as the next DIY'er, but it would certainly add a lot to the price of this project to buy all new casters.

See Part I HERE!