we have this nightstand – it’s a hand-me-down.  it was originally a very ugly ‘fake’ wood finish, so we painted it black a few years ago, but i’ve never really loved it.  but not too long ago, i saw similar pieces popping up all over blog land, painted in great colors, and with the hardware all shined up.  i thought i’d try to give it a freshening and try to breathe some new life into it.  i used some comet and shined that hardware up.  i think it’s brass plated, but there was an ugly ‘antique’ finish on it that came off…with a lot of elbow grease.  i had a quart of red paint left over from when i painted our front door, ad i slapped a on few (4!) coats.  that old nightstand now has a new life as a side table for our front room.

the finish before was this – bad.

and after…

a few of the inspiration pieces…

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