Whimsical DIY shelves from end tables

We’ve been working on a sky-high loft bed as part of our four-year-old daughter’s bedroom makeover, and that meant there were two pieces of furniture she definitely didn’t need anymore: her two nightstands.

I mean, unless we wanted to hang them from the ceiling? Hmmm . . .

I knew I absolutely wanted to reuse them somehow. They’re solid wood with beautiful curvy details, and the process of making them — cutting a single end table in half to get two nightstands — was so fun.

But since she wasn’t going to be able to use them as nightstands when her bed was hovering near the ceiling, I had to think of a new use for them. I stared at them for a long time and eventually tried stacking them. What if I . . . yes! That was it!

There’s a great bookstore and coffee shop here in Truro called NovelTea, and they have a fabulous wall of shelves built from halved coffee tables and end tables — all arranged in stacks and painted the same colour. It was the perfect way to reuse these nightstands.

NovelTea’s cool shelves

So I took another hand-me-down end table I’d had for a while — painted in Fusion Mineral Paint’s Algonquin but only used for a while in our living room. We sliced it in half down the middle, using our circular saw, just like we’d once done to make those nightstands.

Then I spread out a dropcloth and started painting all four of the table-halves — tops, bottoms and underneath, since most nooks and crannies would be visible.

I used one of Fusion Mineral Paint’s new shades, Coral, which was a Christmas gift from the lovely owners of Phillips & Chestnut Victorian Salvage & Decor. It’s a stunning colour and it’s always fun to paint with something so vibrant.

After a couple of rounds of painting, flipping the tables, painting again and doing final touch-ups, they were ready to install …

I possibly should have waited until my husband was awake to help me, but I was too eager to get started (as usual) and decided to figure it out myself.

I did a test-stack of the table-halves and learned that my original plan — alternating the chunkier table with the thinner table — wouldn’t work, since they had very different depths. So I resigned myself to stacking the two chunkier tables first, and then having the two slimmer tables on top. 

There was a tremendous crash as they immediately tumbled down, so apparently I wasn’t going to be able to leave them stacked — even for a second — without securing them to the wall. But how was I going to do that, exactly? Again, I sat and thought.

I decided the table-halves didn’t need to be attached to each other as long as they were attached to the wall. So I ran down to my mitre saw and cut four strips of 2×2 (the length of the tables). I positioned the first table against the wall, pressed the piece of 2×2 against the wall, and screwed down into the table and then again into the wall. It wasn’t budging now! 

I continued to do this with the other three tables — stacking, adding the piece of wood, screwing into the table and into the wall — until my little tower was finished. I didn’t even bother screwing the legs into the table-tops because everything felt so sturdy already. 

I painted the wood strips coral so they blended into the shelves, and then I was ready to style them! It was fun to arrange my daughter’s books and figurines along with a few picture frames I’d painted. 

I love that this set of shelves has a small footprint, and there’s something about it — the fun colour, the curves — that reminds me of the French Provincial-style armoire in Beauty and the Beast. It’s whimsical and perfect for a little girl’s room. 

While the new loft bed is going to be the showstopper in this room, this DIY bookcase will give it a run for its money!