Crate Nightstand - Before and After

I love old crates. I think they are so cool and useful. I have moved this old crate (that you can kind of see in the image below) with me to all of my apartments in NYC. I actually have no idea where it came from; the options are really my grandmother, mother, or a flea market. I used it in my old apartment just sitting on the floor in the kitchen to hold tupperware. This worked really well until we got a puppy and the tupperware needed to move to greener more elevated pastures. Anyway, I moved it to this apartment and decided I really wanted to turn it into a nightstand in the guest room. I just thought it needed more prominent placement.

So, while I was painting the other night tables, I put DP to work creating a night stand.

First, I bought some legs from home depot and had DP cut them down so they were short enough to use as end-table legs.

Attaching them was a bit tricky but DP managed to screw them into the slats just inside the corner blocks.

The legs were new raw pine and the crate was some darker, harder, and stained wood.

DP primed them with some of the left over paint from our living room wall. By mixing a latex candy apple red paint with a bit of water, DP created a sort of deep colored stain. Once the primer was dry, he applied just one even coat of the stain/paint.

Here it is dry and in its new home next to the guest bed.

How To Paint Raw Pine

After

When we were decorating the bedroom, I knew that I wanted to paint our raw pine furniture. We had two antique pieces and then three pine pieces that just didn't fit in the space. I haven't quite decided what I am doing with the dresser but I knew right away that I wanted our end tables to become the pop of color our room needed.

Supplies:

Paint

Sand paper

Wax (I used Fiddes Wax which I had to order online)

Paint Brush

Knobs

Nylons

Lint free rag

Rubber Gloves

1. Start by washing and sanding any imperfections in your wood. My wood was raw but there were a few places it had been patched up which I sanded and then wiped clean with a wet rag.

Before

2. Paint the piece of furniture. I chose a light blue/ aqua colored paint. I really only did one coat on most of the piece but ended up applying a second on the top. Let dry for 24 hours.

3. After everything is dry, take a fine grain sand paper and sand the edges and top of the wood. The intent is to reveal a little of the raw wood beneath and make it look a little old and weathered.

4. Wipe down again with a dry rag to make sure no remaining dust is around.

5. Take the wax (I bought a dark brown version) and using a paint brush apply strokes with the grain.

6. Immediately after applying the wax, take a dry lint-free rag and begin to wipe the wax into the wood. This will remove a lot of excess wax and let you really work in the wax so you can get the desired look. Continue this process until you have done the entire piece.

7. After it is all dried and you have worked in the wax, take your old nylons and use them to buff the piece. Basically you are just at this point really trying to work the wax completely into the wood so that it doesn't cake in any areas or rub off.

8. When you are finished with that, it is time to reassemble the piece and it is ready for use. If you are not happy with any of the areas of wax feel free to use paint to retouch or just sand out some of the wax. Painting furniture is very forgiving as you can always just take a step back and fix the problem.

After

After