The Walter Bean: Did you say DIY?

Now that we have this new house, and it needs oh so many improvements, and I am losing my job, and have no money I have resorted to doing things myself. I'm not trying to sound snooty about it. I am just bad at everything.

I vowed that at the new house we wouldn't do anything cheap and crappy, but as it turns out, that's exactly what I've been doing...but with flare!

I've been pouring over design blogs and DIY blogs for ideas of things to do myself. Currently on the list are faux board and batten in our laundry room, A pelmet for Eden's room, and perhaps for the uglier than ugly semi circle window in our family room, and lastly, night stands for our bedroom. I saw this Bungalow 5 side table in a bedroom spread in Elle Decor (I think), and fell in love. Problem? $720 each. Bah to that.

In researching better pricing, I came across several DIY posts making night stands that looked a lot like the B5 ones. I decided I would undertake one of my first real DIY jobs (other than painting). This was scary. The only other thing I ever tried to do was crackling a bookcase back in '96, and that resulted in re-painting it lavender, then trashing it after six months.

However, the to postings I read about 15 times, made it sound somewhat doable for even an amateur such as myself. I love a spoiler, so I will show you the DIYs and "After" shots of the two blogs I used to help me do this myself.

The first one is here but she lives in Canada, and some of the stuff wasn't available at our Home Depot (neither was the hardware), so I used this post instead, and she did a more in depth tutorial with lots of pics for a dummy like me.

So, we ventured to IKEA for the second time in a month. It's one of Lyla's favorite places, so we tend to go just for fun and a few glasses sometimes. I also adore the fur throws, so I end up picking them up fairly often since they get Filo-ized over time. Lyla will now go into the playroom by herself since visiting with her cousins Noah and Piper, so that gives us some time to bust the place up before we have to sleep in all the beds and visit the "toy section" with Lyla. Yes, we get meatballs, were you going to ask that?

We picked up two Rast night stands. The look like this, and are $34.99 each. Anything from IKEA scares me, as do paper directions for anything since my brain does not allow me to comprehend any directions given to me in this way. Trent is always in charge of paper directions or anything that comes with a bag of hardware.

So, last night at almost 10, I guilted Trent into building the tables for me. I think I even threatened "hating" him if he didn't help in our pursuit of making crap ourselves. The good man that he is, he went upstairs while I watched the Rachel Zoe Project, and built the night stands. Yay! It took him an hour to build both. He is a total whiz with them, so I knew he was the man for the job, and I was the woman to ensure Rach didn't have her baby this episode.

In between working in the morning (because I forgot Lyla's ballet stuff and had to make an additional trip home), I decided to start the process.

I will share a few pics with you now, and then let you know how the final phases come together. I have to wait for the drawer fronts to dry, and the stain to dry before doing the lacquer, and having Trent finish the construction of the drawer slides. Oh shit. I just though of this...
Trent left the wood for the sides of the drawers upstairs because he couldn't build it until the white fronts were dry. Which means, I have to stain the side boards! Blast. I thought I was done with stain.

Anyway, here are the shots from today's job.