I Paid $40 for an Antique Wash Stand—and Finally Made It Mine

Some furniture projects start with a plan.

This one started with a feeling.

I saw an antique wash stand in Tennessee and immediately fell in love with it.

It wasn't the color.

It wasn't even necessarily the shape.

It was the little details.

There were delicate floral vine details worked into the piece, and the handles were unlike anything I'd seen before. Ornate, unusual, and full of character.

I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it yet.

But I knew I wanted it.

I paid $40 for it.

And I knew someday it was going to become a nightstand.

Sometimes "Someday" Takes Two Years

The wash stand came home with me and then went into storage.

For two years.

Apparently, "someday" wasn't quite ready to arrive.

But eventually, I pulled out the sander.

And that's when this little $40 piece started becoming the furniture I had pictured in my head.

The first thing I discovered was that it had a beautiful golden wood color underneath a thick layer of varnish.

Unfortunately, that varnish had been applied rather carelessly.

It covered everything.

Including those beautiful handles.

There was also a splintered piece of wood missing from one side, and the top wasn't exactly secure. It was being held on with six short little nails.

It wasn't perfect.

But I wasn't looking for perfect.

I could see what it could become.

I Had to Let Go of What It Was

I love walnut.

There is something about that deep, rich brown that I never seem to get tired of.

So even though the wood underneath that old finish was beautiful in its own way, I already knew I wanted to take it darker.

I also knew something else.

That beautiful natural golden color wasn't going to work with the gray floors in our home.

The piece needed to belong here.

And that meant changing it.

I started with 80-grit sandpaper on my orbital sander, but I kept a light hand. My goal wasn't to aggressively remove the wood. I just needed to break through that thick, sloppy coat of varnish.

Then I moved to 180 grit.

Finally, 220.

By the time I finished, the old finish was gone and the wood was beautifully smooth.

And honestly?

It was gorgeous.

The natural wood had this soft, light tone that made me stop and admire it for a minute.

But it wasn't my vision.

So I opened the can of Minwax Dark Walnut, grabbed a rag, and started rubbing the stain into the wood.

And almost instantly, I could see it.

The piece was transforming.

This Is the Part I Love

I love transformations.

There is something about taking something that has been forgotten, overlooked, outdated, or simply not quite right and watching it become what you imagined that gets me excited.

You start with a picture in your head.

Then, little by little, your hands make it real.

The dark walnut changed the entire personality of the wash stand.

It went from light and golden to deep and dramatic.

The floral details weren't quite as obvious from across the room anymore.

I knew that would happen.

But I was okay with it.

The details were still there.

They just became something you discovered when you got closer.

After I finished staining, I let it dry for 24 hours.

Then I gave it two coats of Minwax Satin Polyurethane.

I wanted it protected and easy to keep clean, but I didn't want a high-gloss finish competing with the character of the wood.

And then I stood back.

For a while.

I was proud of it.

It was almost finished.

And then I held up the original handles.

And my heart sank.

The Handles Were Suddenly All Wrong

I had loved those handles when I bought the wash stand.

They were one of the reasons I bought it.

But against the new dark walnut finish, they looked terrible.

Or at least, they looked terrible to me.

The thick old finish had covered so much of their original character that they looked dull and almost dirty next to the newly refinished wood.

I thought about replacing them.

So I spent three days looking.

New handles.

Vintage handles.

Anything that might work.

Nothing did.

Every replacement I found seemed to take something away from the piece.

The original handles belonged to it.

They had the right shape.

The right proportions.

The right personality.

I just needed them to look the way I knew they could look.

When the "Wrong" Way Started Looking Right

I tried Rub 'n Buff first.

It didn't stick the way I hoped it would.

And that's when I started researching other ways to improve the hardware.

Eventually, I got brave.

I figured I had two choices.

I could leave the handles the way they were and never really love the finished piece.

Or I could try something different.

And if I ruined them?

Well, they were my handles.

It was my furniture.

And I already didn't like them the way they were.

So I took a sheet of 220-grit sandpaper and started rubbing.

Slowly.

Carefully.

And then I saw it.

Metal.

Just a little glimpse of it underneath the old finish.

And I liked it.

So I kept going.

I didn't sand every bit of the old patina away.

Instead, I worked until I exposed the amount of metal I wanted in the places where I wanted it.

I left some of the aged finish behind.

I let some of the original patina remain.

And little by little, those handles became exactly what I had hoped they could be.

Maybe not what a furniture restorer would have done.

Maybe not the "proper" way to handle antique hardware.

But it was my piece.

And I wasn't trying to make it look brand new.

I wanted it to look like an old piece of furniture that had been given a new life.

Finally, It Came Together

I put the handles back where they belonged.

And suddenly, there it was.

The dark walnut.

The subtle floral vines.

The aged metal.

Those unusual little handles I had loved from the beginning.

It looked like the piece I had envisioned two years earlier when I bought it for $40.

Except now it actually belonged in our home.

And that's probably my favorite part of doing projects like this.

The finished piece isn't always what you started with.

Sometimes you have to remove something.

Sand something away.

Change the color.

Try something that might not work.

Make a mistake.

Change direction.

And sometimes you have to trust your own eye when the conventional approach doesn't give you the result you're looking for.

This antique wash stand didn't need to stay exactly the way I found it to remain special.

I didn't need to preserve every bit of its old finish.

I needed to bring out the parts I loved and make it work for the home I live in now.

And when I finally stepped back and looked at it, I knew I had.

A $40 antique wash stand had spent two years waiting in storage.

Then a sander, some dark walnut stain, a little polyurethane, and a willingness to take a chance on those handles brought it back to life.

And that transformation?

That's the part I'll never get tired of.

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