$18 Thrift-Store Nightstand Christmas Gift Refinish

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

I originally shared this post as a guest on Jennifer’s blog, Insideways.  I wanted to share it with you here in case you missed it, because I’ve got the one for the other side of the bed up for you on Monday!

Probably the best gift that I got for Christmas this year was this little nightstand that was sitting in front of the tree on Christmas morning.

I had been looking for a new bedside table, and my mom found this one at the nearby Salvation Army for just $18!  It’s got a really cute shape doesn’t it?  However, the finish was super ugly yellowish with goldish accents & some random stains.  Not pretty.  But, the shape & details on it were cute, and it was a breeze to refinish it for our bedroom!

I love refinishing furniture & have done quite a bit of it recently.  I love taking things from “eh” to beautiful!  I did this one the very same weekend that I worked on my television consul.  This piece didn’t require nearly as much prep work as the consul though requiring only the normal washing, sanding, wiping, priming.  It did have one random hole drilled in the drawer front that I had to plug up.  I think it used to have different hardware on it before & they just drilled new holes & didn’t fix the old ones.

I used a straight out of the can Behr white flat paint as my base.  Then had a little fun trying something new with Martha Stewart’s glaze in Mercury that I got from Home Depot.  I had seen this & wanted to give it a try, but was a little nervous about it.  I loved how my table looked just in white, and was kinda scared I was going to mess it up.  But, I told myself that I can always paint it back to plain white if I didn’t like it, so I went ahead & gave it a try.

I applied the glaze with a sponge brush. I did it with a VERY light hand, kinda like dry brushing, and spread out what I did apply so that it was very very thin.  This does leave brush strokes if you do it this way.  I applied it to the whole piece, and wasn’t quite sure what I thought about it.  I wondered if I should do it with a heavier hand, but I wasn’t sure.

This glaze had a very long drying time.  I read online elsewhere that it can take up to 24 hours to dry.  That’s probably for a regular application, but mine was taking longer than a regular paint would.  After about an hour of drying time, I went at it with a rag.  This is so not very scientific, but basically, I rubbed in any glaze that was remaining & not dry yet. Kind of like buffing it.  This allowed some of the access glaze to come off, while the remaining glaze no longer showed the brush lines!  I wasn’t really sure what I was doing when I started doing this, I just hoped that it would look good.  And I think it worked!

I didn’t really like it with the brush marks, but after I buffed the glaze in, it looked fabulous!  The glaze gave it some very nice dimension.  I’m not sure how this glaze would look if applied with a more heavy hand, but I think it’d probably look nice on things like frames or shelves even.  Also, a little bit goes a long way.  I’m gonna have this stuff forever!

I sealed my work the next day with wax.  I love the way furniture feels after its been waxed, and I like the soft look of it as well.  With the use of the glaze, my piece already had some shimmer to it, so I didn’t want to loose that by applying a glossy finishing coat.  I am so happy with how this turned out.  It looks lovely in our little room next to our bed.

I’ve now refinished another little table to go on the other side of the bed as well.  I’ll be sharing that one with you after the weekend!

As a slightly creepy side note- the day after this post originally went up at Insideways, I was strolling around the Treasure Mart looking at various things when I stopped dead in my tracks because I saw these!

Um, those are matches for my little table.  Same yellow finish with gold accents & everything!  How weird is that?  My mom picked up my table at least an hour drive away from here.  The only difference is mine had new hardware on it.  I wonder how my table was separated from these?  Creepy right?

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