Moroccan Inspired Nightstand(mare)

Kaye
by Kaye
7 Materials
$50
10 Hours
Medium
I was searching for a small nightstand for on my side of the bed. When we changed to a King size mattress, we found that our new bed was considerably taller than the old bed.

While driving home from a friends, I was magnetically pulled to a furniture yard sale. At the sale, I found a simple wood plant stand that I thought would easily fit the bill. (Ta-Da!)

For $15.00 I purchased a "easy, a little clean-up and it is ready".
As the top had water stains, I decided to refinish the top. After sanding, I found the top was different type of wood then the legs. I didn't know then that the legs were finished with boiled linseed oil.


Friends, if you ever see a piece where the finish is yellowish and the grain is almost black, don't even think about it, walk away.


I began to sand the remaining parts of the piece. This is where it began to get just a little crazy.
Unfortunately, to properly sand this piece I had to take it apart. Notice the disconnected dowels and X's on the bottom of the shelves. I thought that clearly the person who repaired this piece didn't have a clue what they were doing. Nails, heaps of glue and cut dowels would all need to be replaced or removed and replaced properly. Piece of cake or NOT.


Then I noticed the tip of one leg was missing. Well, no problem, I can just add on a piece of wood. Sure.
I began by cleaning up the pieces with mineral oil and commenced to serious sanding. Many of you may know boiled linseed oil could easily be used as a non-penetrable coating on body armor.


60 grit sand paper on my power hand sander was needed just to penetrate the glue and initial coats of linseed oil. I ended up removing the heavily glued dowels.
The dowels I could not pry out with a vise grip, were cut off and sanded flush. In the process of sanding and pulling out dowels, the decorative strips and dots on the outer legs broke off and could not be repaired.


I wound up purchasing metal shelf tabs, new trim, a stencil to cover the water stain marks that I could not sand out. I was able to re-stain the pieces to match reasonably well. I painted the wood half rope trim black and used black to accentuate the tile stencil.


While reconstructing the piece, I discovered the genius behind using dowels. Namely, dowels were the only way to get the darn thing to stay together. By using no small amount of carpenters glue, small L brackets and clamps the piece finally stayed together. Incidentally, that replacement foot tip mentioned above wound up being cut off flat along with the other three legs. I used a high gloss poly finish to accentuate the trip and help keep the piece glued together.


A friend of mine mentioned that the piece reminded her of tables she had seen in Morocco and I went with it.
After gently removing the clamps, and waiting two days, I set the piece next to my bed and have my fingers crossed that it will stay together.


Thanks!
Suggested materials:
  • Polyurethane Gloss   (Hardware Store)
  • Stain
  • Carpenters glue   (Elmer's is now my favorite.)
See all materials
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  • Christy Roppel Christy Roppel on Sep 10, 2017

    Lovely! I have question though: why did you add the side (twist) trim? Did I miss this? I liked the little "balls". It gave it an "Art Deco" feel.

  • Jeanne Johnson Ortego Jeanne Johnson Ortego on Jan 14, 2018

    Congratulations on a great outcome! I've never come across linseed oil finish. What would you have done differently had you known in advance how costly, difficult, and time consuming this would be? Besides using it outside as a plant stand...

  • MikasMom MikasMom on Aug 19, 2018

    How much was you total out lay? I find it strange that a Lin Seed

    Oil finish developed a water stain. Must have soaked her resident plant regularly & never mopped up! A sin to treat wood that way. If you keep a water glass or tea cup on the nightstand, perhaps find a pretty tile to prevent anymore stains. You have a beautiful & original piece of work now. Another thought would be a piece of ¼ or ½ inch plate glass cut to fit the top. Have the edges beveled. Get some wood colored felt & use small dots on each corner & center of the glass. It protects against the glass rubbing the table finish. I do it with any decent furniture top, you worry a great deal less when company visits & people just put things anyplace they choose. Nice job on the table.❤️🙃❤️

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