My perfect bedside table*

A few weeks ago, I took a trip out to my favourite antique fair, Sunbury, in search of a new (by new, I mean old, but new to me) piece of furniture I could use as a bedside table, and some of those pretty antique mirrors with the bevelled edges I love so much. And I was very successful, walking a kilometre back to the car with a potential bedside table and two heavy mirrors wedged under each arm. When I finally got my breath back and my arms no longer felt like they had been stretched, Gumby-esque, so my fingers could brush the ground as I walked, I started the car and bundled everything home.

The bedside table was a bit of a mess really. And it wasn’t the best quality, nor the best value really, costing me £40, but there was something about it that I just really liked. Its shape, its shelves, its sweet little cupboard space, it was everything I had in mind for the perfect bedside table. It was a bit warped, and one of its legs had seen better days, with a metal bit jammed into the rotten wood to make the unit stand straight. It was dirty and its paint was chipped and yellow. It also only had one knob that I suspect was from the 70’s – retro, but not in a good way – and rather incongruous. Despite all this though, I just knew – this was the bedside table for me.

Once home, my husband went over it with the electric sander to even out its imperfections and help me prep for the paint job I was about it give it.

I used some left over bits of paint from other projects around the house, all Farrow and Ball, to give it a new look. Gone was the dirty, yellow, chipped exterior, now a beautiful antique white, James White, in an eggshell finish. The inside of the cupboard, once red, having been coated with what I can only guess was red oxide paint, although I can’t think why, is now a beautiful pale, dirty pink, very much like its name, Calamine. I then painted over the once black inside of the doors with Lamp Room Grey.

The single incongruous knob has been replaced with two pretty mismatching glazed ceramic knobs from Anthropologie - one a pink flower with aged bronze fittings, and the other, a yellow drop knob, again with aged bronze fittings. Both match the colour scheme perfectly, and complement each other enormously (even if I do say so myself!).

Disappointingly, I didn’t get a photo of the bedside table before I started work on it – I always seem to realise I have forgotten this towards the end of my renovation. But I have got some in progress shots as well as one of the ‘original’ knob that I think I might clean up and try and find a home for elsewhere.

Finally, here is the bedside table, in situ, next to the rescued and newly upholstered bed. I can honestly say that after I pick my favourite pyjamas (always Peter Alexander) from one of the shelves, place my beloved iPhone on to charge on the shelf next to my bedtime reading, smooth on some Rose L’Occitaine hand cream from the cupboard, deposit my watch on the surface and finally take a sip of my water before I settle in for sleep, I close my eyes smiling.

*perfect to me anyway.