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Meet the slowest furniture flip ever! I originally purchased this pair of nightstands way back in the beginning of November 2022. I paid $40 for the pair. My original plan was to paint them black and use them in our bedroom.

Then, thanks to a couple of Instagram collabs I went a different direction with our bedroom and didn’t think black nightstands would look right. We added the shiplap wall and then replaced our bed with a Slipcovered Bed by The Inside.

Because of this, they ended up pretty low on my priority list and spent the entire winter untouched in my garage.

In the month of March I finally got back to work on them. I left the top and bottoms unsanded. I wanted to remove that more decorative bottom piece and have more clean lines.

I used citristrip gel and a wire brush on the decorative piece near the top.

The wood had a very pink undertone. I tried many different stain combinations and didn’t like any of them so I decided to revert back to plan A of making them black. I ended up gel staining them instead of painting though. I had some of this black gel stain left over from a previous project and have really liked using it.

Here they are after one coat of black gel stain and 2 coats of matte polycrylic (you could use any water based top coat). I used a staining pad to apply the gel stain and let it dry about 24 hours. I then applied the polycrylic with a foam brush. Make sure you apply thin coats to prevent runs and follow the instructions on the can.

I also ended up changing the hardware to these vintage bronze ring pulls found on Amazon.

Nightstand Reveal

Here they are in my 5 year old’s bedroom. He had mismatched black tables that were functioning as nightstands before. These have so much more storage and surface area.