The Project:
We decided that shoeshelves on their side weren’t cutting it as nightstands! So, we ran to The Home Depot to get some wood and get started… This project used 2″x2″ boards for the legs, 3/4″ plywood for the sides and back, 1″x2″ trim pieces, and 1″x4″ boards for the top. Plenty of Ryobi tools made this a fun piece to work on!
For this project, we got a Kreg Jig (The K5 model) which made putting everything together a breeze! We started with the sides, attaching the 2″x2″ legs to a nice 3/4″ cherry finish plywood.
Next, we attached the sides to the front trim pieces, using kreg screws and plenty of wood glue all the way! The key to this was keeping everything perfectly flat to make sure that everything stayed square. One thing to consider when using kreg screws as fasteners is that when they suck into the wood, it can shift the two pieces being put together. Clamps help tremendously if you have the space and ability to use them!
After securing the sides to the front trim, we secured the sides to the back. After that was done, we had to cut the side trim pieces, which we did just to continue the lines around the side. We left the back blank for cords for lamps or chargers against the wall.
One of the most fun pieces was the top, as this is the only part that we had decided to stain! We went with our traditional dark walnut stain, which we have incorporated all around our home, and it works really well with the lighter tans, blues, and whites that we use in our decorations. Again, this was a situation where we had to secure the piece that we were screwing into with the kreg screws. They do such a great job that you have to compensate for the 1/16″ – 1/8″ that the depth can change if
not properly secured. We learned this the hard way on the first nightstand, but we adjusted for the second one.
Next up was creating our drawers! We decided to go with full-extension drawer slides and because the drawers were only 10″ long, we couldn’t find soft-close slides.
We used 1″ x 4″ planks for all four sides, using kreg screws on the front and back to secure the 3/4″ plywood as the bottom of the drawer (so we would not see the holes) and a nail gun under the sides. We used polyurethane to seal the inside of the drawer but left the rest the natural wood, no paint or stain!
Before we installed the drawers, we went ahead and painted the bases and stained the tops separately before we put it all together! One mistake we did make was installing the tops before we installed the drawers and drawer fronts. We made it work, but it would have been easier to get the drawers installed and finished before putting the tops on.
We used a grey shade of white for this build, which matches our more recent projects and moves away from a creamier white that we used to use. We really like the complement it has with the dark walnut stain and it fits well with our decor!
After staining the tops, we brushed on three separate coats of poly, just to give it a nice finished surface. This way, we won’t damage the wood or stain with water bottles or anything else we set on it.
All in all, these units turned out great and they are custom built to specifically fit our bedroom! They are a little shorter and narrower than most standard sizes for nightstands, and they work perfectly for us. We bought the drawer handles at the Magnolia shop in Waco, TX and we got them with these nightstands in mind and they are the perfect finishing piece to this project!
We had a blast designing and building these and know they will last us for many, many years! It’s a simple, timeless design that will be plenty easy to sand and repaint or stain if our preferences or colors ever change.
That is it for this project. As always, happy building!
– Christian and Heidi
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