Modern Nightstand
First Step in a remodel of my bedroom at home.
My room is currently furnished with mismatching furniture purchased from various stores, all with a slightly different finish and style. I have been wanting to remodel my room and give it a more modern look. I like the idea of simple, clean lines, and want to extend this to my bedroom with simple, streamlined furniture that will hopefully make my room feel more spacious and less chaotic.
This is my first rough sketch of what I wanted it to look like. If you can't tell, I originally planned on this piece being used as a TV stand, mounted to the wall to give it a "floating" appearance. At this point I didn't have any dimensions or what type of material I wanted to use, although naturally finished wood always appealed to me.
This is some of the rough schematics I drew up with dimensions. At this point I decided to go with natural pine as my material because it is easy to work with and looks nice finished with a clear polyurethane.
As you can see I wanted to really do this right and made nice clean joints everywhere. This not only makes the piece look more professionally done, but makes the lines look cleaner and more accurate. Mostly all joints were secured with plenty of wood glue and a few finishing nails.
The two joints connecting the two "boxes" I decided to use more than just finishing nails. As I mentioned originally, I wanted to use this as a TV stand, so the boxes would house different media components. Because of this I used wood screws to connect the bottom box to the top. This will ensure rigid construction so it does not break up under the weight of the components. Again notice the clean recessed joints which give it an all around nicer appearance.
The one joint that was a little uneven due to the use of a nearly 30 year old table saw. However this is nothing that a little wood filler couldn't fix!!
All the joints have been glued and nailed, and the last two joints are clamped while the glue dries. After the glue dries I applied wood filler to the nail holes and any other minor imperfections I could not sand out of the wood. Once that dried I went over the piece again with a fine grit sandpaper, to make sure it is nice and smooth for finishing.
A few coats of a clear polyurethane gives it a nice clean look, with a modest sheen. It is mounted to the wall with a 2x2 wood strip screwed into the studs in the walls and then the top of the piece. As you can see from the picture, I also drilled a few holes in each horizontal piece to help organize cables, helping with the clean look.
