ikea night stand hack

i am loving the loft still.  and i am still totally craving some color.

so, i struck a compromise with my husband.  we picked the cheapy nightstands from ikea that i wasn't totally sure of - but with the promise that i could paint them a new, happy bright hue and of course he reminded me that the money we'd save could go to other fun items, such as:

my new footstool/coffee table from world market! should be here in a week.

which means that my ikea nightstands looked like this when we picked them up:

 my first step was to put them together.

but after getting through step 2 [seriously, has anyone ever tried to put something together from ikea?!], i decided to wait til pi got home so he could put it together for me. that worked much better.

 

 

once the nightstand was put together, it was actually pretty simple to paint and revamp the nightstand.  first, i had to pick a color.  i decided to go with my favorite color - blue - so if i get out of this color phase pretty soon at least they will be in my favorite blue color.

supplies: paint, paint brush, sandpaper, and of course a dropcloth.

because the nightstands were originally a fairly pretty grey-ish color, i decided to only do one coat of paint.  they grey base underneath really stuck out with just one coat.  when doing only one coat of paint, brush strokes are key.  after coating each side with the bright blue, i dragged the brush from top to bottom to keep the brush stripes the same and make it look more like i had painted directly over wood.

the finished product!

closeup of the top of the nightstand.

i am pretty happy with the outcome, i gotta say!  the bedroom still needs some pictures hung up over the night stands and a few other decorative accents - and once i have a few of those put together i'll throw some pictures up. 

but so far so good, and it's beginning to feel more like home.

happy sunday!  til next time...