We’re settling into to the Thrifty Palace and having a great time with DIY projects to spruce up our home. Our first projects were geared toward organizing and decorating our bedrooms. Nightstands (or pieces you can use as nightstands) are relatively easy to find in thrift stores. The pieces we used in these projects were less than $13.00 each. None of the pieces were perfect. My night stand had some discoloration and the one Ricks revamped had this god awful laquer from the 1960s, 70s, or 80s. Yet, we saw potential in each piece, which ultimately led to beautiful outcomes.

Selecting Furniture: Natasha offered great tips for selecting furniture in her guest post a few weeks ago. The only thing we’d add is make sure the piece you choose has the necessary amount of storage you’re looking for. The matching night stands Ricks chose have enough surface space to hold lamps and books. They also have very deep drawers that provide functional storage. It was also important to her to have matching nighstands so that they would be equal height. My nightstand only has one drawer, but it works well for the small items that I need to get to regularly. Additionally, it has a cut out on each side, so I added  baskets to hold more things. I don’t need two night stands, so the uniqueness of this piece worked for my needs.

A Note on Spray Paint: Ricks originally tried Krylon Spray Paint, and it was teeerrrrrriiiibbbbllle!  It sprayed on clumpy, and Ricks got more spray paint on her hands than on the nightstand! We initially thought it was a bad batch, but when she tried the spray paint in another color, we discovered that the spray paint just isn’t great quality. We then found Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover Spray Paint, and we both had great experiences with it. Since then, we’ve used the same brand in three additional colors for other projects. We highly recommend it, as we’ve seen it bond well to several different surfaces.

A Note on Time: Prepping the pieces + the spray paint debacle + the cold weather slowing down the drying time + spraying multiple coats caused this project to span a couple days. We’re fortunate to have some grass space in our backyard, so we were able to leave the pieces out for a long time. If you don’t have that luxury, you may want to make sure you take on spray paint projects on sunny, warm weekends when you’ve got plenty of time.

Works in Progress:

Ta da! We’re done!

We’re both quite fond of how our nightstands turned out. Looking forward to the next DIY projects for each of our rooms. Stay tuned. 🙂

Have you taken on any DIY projects lately? Have any spray paint tips? Share them with us and our thrifty readers. 

Until next time,

R&R