Nightstand Refinish

For a little extra storage in the baby's room, we took a nightstand (that we got for free from a friend) and refinished it.  Refinishing and reusing furniture is quickly becoming one of our very favorite things.  Anyone who has ever shopped for and/or bought furniture knows that quality stuff does not come cheap.  So, every chance we get with a free or low cost piece of furniture that we need, we take it!  We've always been able to redo it and use it.  Check out what the nightstand looked like when we got it:

It is another piece of solid wood furniture with some old school hardware (right up our ally).  Below is the end result after sanding, painting, and getting new pulls for the drawers.

I mean, how sweet is it to furnish our baby's room with a FREE nightstand and a $30 dresser?!?  We're really excited that it came together the way it did.  Stay tuned...more projects (especially for the nursery) to come!

Painting Stripes on a Wall

For the baby BOY's nursery, Casey found some fabric (pictured to the right)

and decided to go with Navy Blue as one of the main colors we use throughout the room.  Of course, one of the first things I did was get the painting out of the way.  Casey had the idea to do stripes on one wall- the wall where his crib would be-and leave the other walls the solid Khaki color they already were.  After some anal-retentive measuring and calculating by myself (Sean), I figured out how to evenly space out 4 Navy Blue stripes alternating with 4 Khaki stripes.  You can see it measured out here:

Once everything was all measured, taped, and prepped, I began painting in the stripes.  The pictures below show the succession on stripes as they progressed.

After all the stripes had been painted with TWO even coats, I pulled off the tape and, voila!  One huge key was the tape we used...Frog Tape.  Most people use the blue tape when painting.  However, the green Frog Tape has edges that don't let paint leak through or run.  I made sure to press the tape hard onto the wall to seal the lines well.  You can see below that the lines really came out sharp and clean.  

With the stripes painted, we were ready to start moving some furniture in and really get the room ready!

Refinished Dresser

In true Nestor fashion, we always do our best to get something we need for way less than full price.  As we've been setting up the baby's room, we've been on the prowl looking for furniture at lower cost that we could fix up/refinish to look the way we like.  As we were out at garage sales one Saturday, we came across a real wood dresser (so we knew it was quality) that was in great condition.  Check it out below.

Note the fantastic throw-back style hardware.  The best part (by far) about this dresser is that, after some bargaining, we walked away with it for $30!!!  If you can tell me where to get a better deal than that, let's just say I'd like to be your best friend.

The first thing we did was to take off the bulky knobs it sits on.  We also took off the hardware with plans to replace it all.  The tricky part here is that we needed to fill those previous holes before painting.  After a lot of sanding to get some old finish off and down to the bare wood, Casey decided on a Navy Blue paint to match the other stuff in the baby's room.  You can see the finished product below.  It really looks great in the room and (even though it's kind of tough to see) it really goes well with the stripes on the wall.

Do you have something you'd like refinished?  Let us know!  You can email us at sweetlynested@gmail.com.