Two Night Stands

Maple Night Stand Before

Walnut Night Stand After

This lovely maple table, one of the two I refinished, was in pretty good condition to start with, just needed to be stripped and stained with walnut to match the other furniture in the bedroom it was to be used in.

Spindles are always a lot of work and this one was no different. The spindles were time consuming to strip and I had to make sure all the old finish was entirely removed before I could sand it for the final time to properly prep it for staining.

It looked pretty good stained a bit darker, but because the wood was maple, a true hardwood, it only went a couple of shades darker than the original color because the harder wood is, the denser it is, therefore it will only accept a certain amount of stain. As with most furniture, I finished it off with two coats of semi-gloss polyurethane which looked great. These table were commonly used in the late 1950's and early 1960's, but can date back much further. My guess is that this on was at least fifty years old.

Walnut Night Stand Before

Walnut Night Stand After

Similar to the maple night stand, this walnut version was already darker to start with, therefore it took the stain better and turned out darker than the maple.

This night stand had a lower shelf with a decorative, fluted front which had a bit of damage and had to be reinforced and glued to shore it up. It was easier to remove the shelf altogether and work on it separately then install it before it could be stained.

This walnut night stand took a lot of time to strip because it too had spindles. Interestingly enough, the unusual feature of this night stand was that the two spindles on the right side, were a bit larger than the ones on the left. I believe this was an error on whoever built it since the larger spindles likely were designed to go in the back, with both smaller spindles in the front. Both of these night stands were used in the same bedroom with a dark walnut dresser. Even though they weren't an equal match, they were the same height and looked pretty good in the room.