Serenity Now

Due to limited space, most of the rooms in our condo had to do double duty, including our bedroom hallway/closet, which also doubled as an office space for us:

But since Leon and I have very different working schedules (he’s a night owl and is content to stay up until 2AM, my brain turns off around 9:30 and I’m usually asleep by 11) this system never worked out that well. Thankfully in our house now, Leon has his own office and I can have lights (and music) out whenever I want. To make the most of this newfound serenity, I’ve been slowly changing out some of our bedroom furnishings and décor. The first to go were our Malm dresser and bedside tables.

As affordable and streamlined as they were, these pieces did little to warm up the room, and the match-matchy set made me feel like I was living in a catalog, not a refined master suite. But while perusing some home design blogs last month, I came across an inspired bedside table DIY project, and fell instantly in love:

Which actually started out as this:

Amazing, huh?

The instructions were so thorough and it seemed so easy (and cheap!) I was off to IKEA and Lowe’s that weekend to pick-up the materials, but when I got home and started to assemble the frame of the tables, I realized they were going to be way to high for our bed. Since there was no turning back now (boxes were open, screws were drilled) Leon suggested we shorten them by cutting the side pieces down to 20 inches and making them two drawer tables vs. three – brilliant! Between that and Friday night’s foot massage, he’ll be in good with me for a while.

I lugged the side pieces to work with me the next week and ran over to Anawalt lumber on my lunch break to get them cut down. $2 and 20 minutes later it was done! The following weekend I stained, primed and painted, following the original posting instructions pretty closely. They did a great job providing very detailed directions and materials lists, and although I went slightly darker on the stain than the original project (I went with Moorish Teak by Zar) and ordered these drawer pulls instead, I’m thrilled with the way they came out. Not only do we still have plenty of room to stash our “unmentionables,” but the drawer pulls complement our lamps (thrift store finds) beautifully.



Now onto my dresser replacement, which was an exciting flea market find last month. I’m finally starting on its rehabilitation – can’t wait to share the before and after!