Up-cycled Bedside Tables from an old Desk

This old desk sat in my driveway for a solid month before I finally got around to tearing it apart for this project. We have no bedside tables, so usually things like a cup of water or remote controls hang out on the headboard of our bed. Not the greatest spot, especially when a clumsy little boy reaches for the cup of water and dumps it all over your bed. :(

I bought the desk for $3 at a thrift store at a retirement community. The drawers were in fairly good shape, built with nice dovetails. The sides weren't too beat up, but the top was a little rough. It had been painted with a glossy black paint to cover up some wood veneer that had been chipping. If you wanted to do the same project, be sure to find a desk like this one where there are 8 little legs. A lot of desk just have the four outer legs, and if you were to cut out the middle, you'll end up with two small tables that just fall over.

I've seen this project done where they used a saw to cut out the middle section, and then used a router to smooth the edges. But the op of this one is not in great shape so I didn't really want to keep the top. Plus the trim of the top would be hard to duplicate with my router. So I opted to take the whole top off and replace it for each side table.

A lot of tops will be secured with screws that hold it down onto the desk frame, so you can see here these recessed screws just need to be removed. You'll also find something similar in the frame along the front of the desk, hidden when the drawers are closed.

With all the screws removed you'll need to pry up on the top. Often it will be held in place with some glue too. If your desk is old enough, then the glue is pretty old and it should be pretty easy to pop the top off.

With the top off, I had to remove the vertical piece in the front and back still holding the two sides together.

Mine had a nice little rabbet joint, but was also nailed to hold it in place. With the nails removed a gently tap with the hammer should allow this joint to come apart.

With the two sides separated, they need to be sanded or scraped down. If you're planning to repaint, then you just need to remove any loose paint, and rough up the rest of it so the paint can adhere to it. I had no interest in stripping all the paint in an effort to stain this, because I would have been another month working on getting all the paint out of the tiny grooves of this desk.

After sanding everything in preparation for paint, I put my top back on with some wood glue and nails.

For the top, I used chalkboard paint, because I thought it would be cute to be able to leave sweet messages on each other's bedside tables in the morning. For the hardware I grabbed some hefty water spigot knobs. Gives it a little more color and isn't something you'd find on my cabinets and drawers, which I kind of liked for this project. For the paint I used an off-white Sherwin Williams oil-based Proclassic paint. I love that stuff for anything that could get beaten on or might need solid scrubbing later on (so pretty much anything that exists in my house with 3 boys and a dog).

Finally, I put the tables in place and left a sweet note for my husband. :)