Take an old wood box and turn it into an elegant nightstand or side table by adding O’verlays and a little bling.
Fab Furniture Flippin’ Contest: Cut n Paste with O’verlays
This post is a little different than my usual furniture refinishing posts because it’s part of the Fab Furniture Flipping’ Contest. That means it’s competing against several other bloggers’ post to see who had the best furniture flip while following the theme Cut n Paste with O’verlays. O’verlays. O’verlays are decorative fretwork panels that come in several different patterns and attach to furniture, giving an old furniture piece a totally new look. They can be used on doors, wall, and glass too. They have so many DIY possibilities.
The biggest difference for me with this post is that I usually take a few weeks or even months to work on a furniture project, taking time to think each part through. But this little table had to be finished in less than a week. Even with such a short timeline, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
If you follow the SimplePracticalBeautiful Facebook page, you probably saw that I loved the ideas from Houzz about making your bedroom more luxurious. One of the ways they suggested was to add some bling with your nightstand. That idea was my inspiration for this project.
The Box
We’ve been using a plain, brown box made from plywood as a nightstand. I’ve had it since I was a kid, so it’s been a treasure box, a doll box, a storage box, a goodie box, and much more. I’ve refinished it a couple of times, but it’s seen better days. It was functional, but not very nice to look at.
Instead of replacing it, I decided to use O’verlays to give it a total makeover and change that boring box into an elegant nightstand.
Refinish the Wood Box
I started by stripping any finish off the box, so that the wood could absorb a new stain color more evenly. If you want to read in detail how to strip the finish off wood, take a look at my post on how to restore a vintage table.
The dresser in our room was stained a beautiful ebony color, and I stained our bathroom shelf to match. To help my new nightstand fit with the other furniture, I decided to stain the box the same ebony color. This would also give it a dark base to contrast with the silver accents.
Cut the Overlays to Size
Full disclosure: I received a panel from O’verlays for this Fab Furniture Flippin’ Contest with a Jasmine motif. I cut out pieces from it to fit on each side of the box (minus a little for trim on the bottom). I cut it so that the motif was centered in each of the pieces.
The directions from O’verlays say to cut it with a utility knife. That worked, but it was painfully slow to cut out all five pieces. So I pulled out my Dremel rotary tool and used it to slice through the panel. That was much faster, and cut just as evenly.
I sanded each cut with 150 grit sand paper to smooth out any jagged edges from cutting. Then I painted all of them a metallic silver color.
O’verlays suggests using Liquid Nails to attach their panels to wood, but ours had dried out, so I used wood glue instead. The wood glue worked well, and the silver motif is securely on the top and sides of the box. I glued them on one at a time, with at least half an hour between attaching each to give them time to dry. If you’ve ever had a project bumped when the glue was still wet, you understand. It’s worth it to wait.
Add Trim
Once the motif panels were on and the glue was dry, it was time to add trim to give a finished look to the nightstand box.
I bought a piece of 1 1/4” molding to use as trim. I chose that size because the lid of the box is 1” tall. With the depth of the Overlay piece, a 1 1/4” trim would fit perfectly around the sides of the lid. This way I can still open the lid of the box, but I won’t have any lines that cut through the motif.
I cut the molding with a mitre saw, making enough trim to fit around the top edge of the box and the bottom edge.
I tried painting the wood trim with the same silver metallic spray paint I used on the O’verlay panels, but the wood grain showed through too much and didn’t look good. So I found a better way to make my trim look metallic: aluminum tape.
Aluminum tape is just what it sounds like: strips of aluminum foil with a sticky back wound up in a roll like tape. (Here’s an affiliate link to Aluminum Tape on Amazon.) It wrinkles and bends just like aluminum foil, so it’s a little tricky to work with. Luckily it’s cheap enough that I could mess up, peel it off, and try again several times. It took some practice to get used to using it. And even still, the surface has bumps and small dents that will always be there. But it’s a cheap, easy way to make anything look like shiny metal.
After the trim was covered in aluminum tape, I used wood glue to attach the trim onto the top of the wood box. Again, one piece at a time, allowing it to dry between. The trim on the bottom of the box had to wait until after I attached legs to my nightstand.
Attach Legs to the Nightstand
I picked up this little table at a thrift store a while ago. I think it’s made of particle board and cardboard. In other words, very cheap. So I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. But the legs came of easily and worked perfectly for turning my box into a little table.
The legs have a fake wood grain texture, so I hid that by covering them with more aluminum tape. (Lots of bling for this nightstand).
It was easy to screw the legs on from inside the nightstand. And once they were securely attached, I added the silver trim on the bottom of the box. The silver trim covers the legs a little, but it really finishes off the nightstand.
An Elegant Nightstand
Here’s my “new” piece of furniture!
The dark ebony stain with the silver O’verlays motif really hide all of the dents and scratches on my old wood box.
I really like how the wood trim and legs look like metal too.
And here it is in my bedroom beside our bed.
Okay, realistically, this little table is on my husband’s side of the bed, so it will probably end up “decorated” more like this.
It goes with the style of our room, but also adds a little bling to a pretty muted room. A little luxury added to my bedroom—mission accomplished.
Thanks to the hosts of the Fab Furniture Flippin’ Contest and O’verlays for putting together this fun Cut and Paste adventure!
Any bloggers interested in being part of a future Fab Furniture Flippin’ Contest should contact info@fabfurnitureflippincontest.com.