Custom-made nightstands

If you can’t find what you are looking for – just make it yourself.
That’s my new motto and I’m sticking to it. Well, husband forbids.:)

I simply failed in my search for a perfect pair of nightstands for our little bedroom in terms of  size+price+look. Yes, size is the biggest issue for us, folks. We can’t really accommodate bulky pieces of furniture or, I should clarify, any other furniture in this room except for our bed and coupe of nightstands.

So the nightstands HAD to be very compact while still functional and work with the rest of the room.

What I like about this design is its minimalism. We don’t usually keep knick-knacks on our nightstands, so this design suits us just fine. The top part is for essentials only (and occasional flowers) and the little shelve on the bottom is for magazines and books that we like to read before going to bed. We do plan to have reading lights in the future, but those will be installed on the wall as well.

The materials we used were two birch planks from Home Depot, $17 each. My first choice was maple, but at $35 for the same board, I couldn’t rationalize the expense. We applied three coats of this wood stain, in “Espresso”, some oil based varnish to protect the wood, strong glue, some screws and bolts to attach the shelve to the wall.

I’m not going to go over how to cut wood and put the shelve together, I’m guessing if you are taking on DIY like this you already know/have the tools for the project but I will say that the cutting was the easiest part, it’s staining and varnishing that took most of the time due to drying in between coats.

After we had them installed V started working out design alternatives: “I should have made this side longer and this side curve this way, so we could have more storage space on this side”, to which I replied: “no worries, honey, next time you can make them anyway you want.”:)

Our bedroom is coming together nicely, I have to say, so stay tuned for more updates.