Bedside Table Makeover

Trusty Husband and I had a quandary in our new house. Sneaky floor vents sat right in the space where our bedside tables should go, making it impossible to have a traditional stand with drawers. If we moved them out to give the vent enough space, they looked like we just randomly placed bedside tables in the middle of the room. So I went on a quest for two matching bedside tables wide and tall enough to accommodate floor vents bringing us much-needed heat and A/C.

You'd think this would be an easy task. You'd be wrong.

I searched at tons of places - World Market, Ashley, Target, Z Gallerie, Macy's, TJ Maxx, Pier 1, Anthropologie - but no one had anything that would work. Everything was either too close to the floor, too narrow or far too expensive. But in a last effort at my second HomeGoods, I found these:

Two tables wide and tall enough for the vents, with a cool shape, for only $39.99 each. But oh - one was black and one was white, and no ma'am, everything we have is on the floor and going in the back to look for another table just like one of these won't do any good. Hmph. Hello, paint.

I needed to slap a coat of paint on these babies. That required two coats of primer first to try to get the black table as white as possible.

There we go - two primed, white tables. Now for some color:

I went with a high-gloss pale turquoise to go with the red and brown accents in the bedroom (photos to come). Here's a tip when painting tables: Turn them over on an old sheet, and paint all the corners with a brush first. Then roll the rest of the inside, THEN turn them over and paint the outsides and the tops. Your first inclination will be to paint the tops first, but then you have to wait for them to dry before you can really get underneath.

Another tip: if your project is going to span more than one day, you don't have to wash out your brushes and rollers. Just keep them in a plastic bag and they'll stay wet. This saves a lot of time, because washing paint out of brushes takes FOREVER.

I painted my tables in the garage, but let them dry in the sun. Sometimes I cover painted furniture with a coat of polyuruthane, but with high-gloss, you really don't have to.

And there you have it! It's hard to tell in this picture, but the color looks really nice. And since these tables didn't have drawers, I found two small baskets on sale at Hobby Lobby for all of our random bedside junk. So when you need something specific for your house, don't rule out finding mismatched items and giving them a once-over with your trusty paintbrush!