REFINISHED SIDE TABLES

Prepare yourself for another post in our Crafty Chaos series...

When Kaitlyn bought a house a couple of years ago, she picked up a second-hand dresser that she refinished and now uses as her TV stand (see before and after pictures below).

Since then, she's been trying to find a set of second-hand side tables or nightstands with similar vibe for that same room, to go next to the couches. Well, after years of (very sporadic) searching, we found some! We picked up these beauties at the Springville DI for $20/each. (Please don't mind the messy garage corner - organizing the garage is a project for anther day!)

We liked that the chunky details and unique hardware felt reminiscent of the dresser.

Here's a quick rundown of how we refinished these!

We began with a good cleaning. This included getting all of the dust out of the crevices and removing the price stickers and the goo they left behind. (We love Goo Gone for this - we picked up a bottle at Home Depot a couple of years back and it’s still going strong!)

We then pulled out the drawers and removed the hardware, setting the hardware aside for later. 

We decided to keep the wood look on the top, but stain it a darker color. To start this process, we roughed up the surface - quick once over with the sander. And then cleaned it again.

We then taped off and covered the top of it, in preparation for using a spray paint primer on the other parts of each side table. We used painter's tape and masking paper to cover the top (both of which were purchased at Home Depot a year or two ago for other projects - yay for leftover supplies!)

With the top of these protected, we were then free to prime the sides and front of each table, as well as the drawers, using Zinsser spray paint primer.

Once that had dried, we proceeded to stain the top a darker color. General Finishes Carbon Gray Gel Stain has been Kaitlyn's best friend through many projects in the past couple of years, from refinishing bathroom cabinets and handrails, to refinishing the top of her second-hand coffee table. So, I think it was a no-brainer for her to bust out her can of Carbon Gray for this project too! General Finishes' website has great instructions and videos for applying their gel stain; we did three coats, applying the stain with a foam brush, wiping down with cloth rags and then lightly sanding after each coat dried. (The picture above shows the color after the first coat.)

After adequate drying time (about three days) - time clearly used to hit up the local plant nursery - it was time to put a few coats of polyurethane over the newly stained surface. While Kaitlyn swears by the General Finishes' gel stains, she does not swear by their tip coats (it's a sensitive subject!). So she used a polyurethane by Varathane (purchased at Home Depot and leftover from other projects). The one used on this project was a water-based polyurethane with a gloss finish. 

With the top finished, we were able to paint drawers and base of these side tables (my favorite part!). We used Behr Green Meets Blue in a satin finish.

It was a beautiful day, so we actually took the drawers one at a time to the patio table and painted them there. We used a craft paint brush to help get in some of the nooks and crannies, of which there were an abundance. We left the side tables themselves on the garage floor and painted those there, using a 2-inch paint brush (this is Kaitlyn’s go-to paint brush for most of her painting projects). 

After giving everything a few days to cure, we gently laid each side table on the back side so that we could easily add some felt strips all along the bottom to protect the LVP floors they'll be living on from any scratches or scuffs. 

We also re-attached the hardware to the drawers at this point.

It's nice to now have a place during movie nights to set drinks and then tuck away remotes and ever store that cross-stitch Kaitlyn likes to work on when watching movies!

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