hairpin leg nightstands.

Since we've been too busy to start any new projects, I'm sharing an old project today.  We searched for months for new nightstands when we first bought the house.  My old one didn't fit with the style of our bedroom and Rich's old one was a few pieces of wood attached to the wall.  We had a really hard time finding tables that were low enough to go with our bed.  We finally decided to build our own.

Don't mind the mess of cords behind mine - I'm still trying to figure out the best way to deal with that.  

Anyways, this project is super simple.  We purchased our hairpin legs online from hairpinlegs.com - we went with the raw steel version.  Then we picked up a pre-made wood top from Lowes and a can of clear matte sealer.  The raw steel version of the legs will rust if left untreated, so we chose to use a clear sealer to keep the original look of the legs.

Spray the legs, following the directions on your particular sealer.

Next, we screwed the legs on to the bottom of the wood tops.  Make sure you either create a template or measure so that all the brackets are evenly spaced from the edge of table. 

Finally, we had to finish the tops of the table.  We were trying to get the nightstands to be as close a match as possible to our bed frame.  We coated the tops with Howard Feed-N-Wax for now.  It made the color of the wood a little richer and provided some protection.  

After living with these for quite a few months, I will say that the Feed-N-Wax might not have been the optimal solution.  It was a convenient solution - we already had the Feed-N-Wax on hand.  Down the line, I think I'll either add a clear coat to these or choose a very light wood stain to provide a better seal. Since the tables are pretty much raw wood, they are a bit difficult to dust.  Other than that, these nightstands have awesome.

home tour: master bedroom / master bathroom.

This is our master bedroom in all its glory.  It has super fancy wood paneling.  Seriously... check that stuff out.  Darker/richer than the rest of the paneling in the house and no knots.  It's really gorgeous paneling.  

Two things bug me in this shot.  One, if you look closely, you can see how crappy a job the previous owners did on the trim when they replaced the windows.  I don't know if they just stained it wrong or if they chose a bad wood for staining, but it's a splotchy mess.  It's a small detail, but it drives me insane.  Second, the quilt at the end of our bed.  I bought this when we lived in an all-cream apartment and I loved it.  It was bright and airy and gray!  Everything I needed.  Now I think it looks washed out against the paneling.  I'm hoping my aunt might consider whipping us up a new quilt with some brighter colors.  But until then, it stays (hello budget!)

This is my nightstand.  It's usually not this clean.  We made them from a finished wood top and hairpin legs.  I'll post about that sometime.  The lamp is from Target.  The pillowcases are from Ikea.  I love these pillowcases.  The orange pillowcases have seen better days though and just aren't as white as they once were.  I'm on the lookout for something new.  I want something with a bright pattern that isn't too matchy-matchy with the rest of the bedding.  That's apparently really hard to find.

Behind this folding screen slider thing is my closet.  Yes, my closet takes up an entire wall.  I can't even fill it because I don't really have a lot of clothes.  It's at least 1/3 empty.  You also get a glimpse of Rich's man corner - complete with backpack, random axe, and his red plaid hat.  Rich may not be from NH originally, but he's learning to fit in pretty well.

This is the wall across from our bed.  The pocket door to the master bathroom is on the right.  These are old dressers from our last apartment.  The apartment that had no functional closets, so I bought a pair of these and forced Rich to use them.  The other one currently resides in Rich's closet.  His closet setup drives him insane, so a renovation is probably in our future.  This dresser above is way to large for the space, but does the trick until I stop being lazy and sell them.

The master bathroom.  I try not to think about this room much despite the fact that I use it everyday.  It screams 80s to me.  I wanted to demo it as soon as we moved in, but then the general costs of homeownership got in the way.  The bathroom will probably be renovated down the line - maybe 3-5 years.  It's a completely functional bathroom and nobody uses it besides us, so it's not a priority right now.  Notice how weird and square the toilet is.  Notice how everything is a slightly different shade of off white.  Notice the same crappy linoleum floor tiles as the other bathroom.  Ugh.

Fun story.  When we first moved in, the pocket door to the bathroom had been removed.  You can't see directly into the bathroom from the bedroom, but the bathroom is still a little too close for comfort.  The reason why the pocket door had been removed?  The previous owners set up a vanity on the other side of the closet and put a light fixture over it.  Seriously.  They chose a light fixture over having bathroom privacy.  We changed that pretty quickly.