How to Make Nightstands from an Antique Vanity

How to Make Nightstands from an Antique Vanity

Hi friend!

I’m excited to share how to make nightstands from an antique vanity with you today! This was something I saw and filed away when Ed and I did vintage markets! And guess what? It’s way easier than I thought it would be!

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Antique Vanity

So why bother doing this? Simple, this is the style of nightstands that I had envisioned for our bedroom. Once I have an idea like that then it’s hard for me not to find a way to execute it! Even if it takes a couple months of searching and a little elbow grease to make it happen!

I wanted the narrow width combined with the more ornate and darker toned wood detailing.

Finding the Vanity

It’s probably no surprise that I found this antique vanity on the Facebook Marketplace lol! I mean I’m basically furnishing our house from there!

I shared how I search the Marketplace for vintage items HERE!

Anywayyy I scored this beauty for $100 after some haggling 😉 Like I mentioned I had to search for awhile to find “the one”, but my patience and persistence paid off!

Deconstructing the Vanity

To my surprise, the vanity’s deconstruction was pretty straightforward. I don’t get lucky like that often! 😉 All I used to take it apart was flathead screw driver and a hammer. You can see where there are brackets on the bottom and sides that hold the piece together with screws.

Once I removed them each side piece also had a joinery slot where the center back piece slide in. Trying to do as little damage as possible, I hammered the back until it came out. And tada! Two separate “nightstands”!

Adding Knobs and Castors

There were a couple of things I knew I’d be changing aside from taking the piece apart. I didn’t love the floral knobs so I replaced them with solid white porcelain ones. Also this vanity was missing it’s castors. Some that I came across had them, some didn’t.

You can find the knobs I used to replace the floral ones HERE!

I’ve had to track down vintage castors before and have a couple of places I would typically get them from. However, with our current world situation, I opted to find some on eBay instead. And I found a set of 8 for $14 shipped, which I thought was very reasonable.

I’m linking some other options for castors HERE!

And HERE!

Making the Castors Work

This particular vanity did originally come with castors as evidenced by the holes and inserted brackets. But the ones I bought didn’t fit. So I had to remove the metal brackets with pliers and then drill the holes a bit deeper so the new castors would fit properly.

Then I flipped the nightstands upside down, added some wood glue, and set the castors inside. After that the cutie little nightstands were ready to roll! 😉

Finishing the Nightstands

After the knobs and wheels were attached I filled the joinery slots on the inside of both nightstands with wood filler. When it was dry I sanded it smooth and then used a dark walnut stain to stain them. The stain was a close enough match for me and blended well with the woods natural variations.

Click HERE for the wood filler I used!

I faced this side of the nightstands towards the wall where no one would ever see them anyway 😉 But you can see how they turned out below!

And you can see our full farmhouse bedroom reveal HERE!