0 DIY: Bedside Tables

I own the Ikea Malm queen bed set (too many people do!) from the days of living in an apartment and all I could afford at the time was Ikea furniture. Actually who am I kidding, even right now all I can afford is mostly Ikea furniture =P. At that time I had a relatively large bedroom for an apartment, so I even bought the matching slide out side tables from the Malm collection, which Ikea has since seemed to have discontinued cause it's no longer on their site.
This side table set, complete with a top shelf for the back of your headboard, was pretty cool to me... at the time. But the more we lived with it the more unpractical I found the whole thing, especially after moving into our current home with a smaller bedroom. 

We hardly use the slide out feature since we always just kept the tables slid out as oppose to hiding them in behind the headboard. Plus we really don't have much 'stuff' to put in and around our bed, so all the shelf space and the behind-the-headboard shelf was really not that useful. 


SO, I decided to turn that whole three-piece item pictured above, into my craft room desk! Will share that project in another post, today we are talking about bedside tables. Having made this omission from the bedroom, we were left with no side tables for over a month while J kept complaining that he NEEDS a side table to put his alarm clock and phone. 

I would love to have something like this:

Photos from here and here

But in came this quick little makeshift:
(Photos taken by phone, sorry for the quality!)


I kept an eye out for side tables on weekends whenever we went to a mall. While at one of my favourite places to (mostly window) shop, I was in the 'storage' aisle where there is a huge selection of storage baskets/crates/containers. 

Picked up two wooden grey-stained crates plus two black metal wire bins, put the two together and now we have two side tables. This is J's side. 


I love the little metal corner details on the crates. And the grey-washed finish too! I do kind of wish the crates came in a larger size though, the proportions might be better with the wire basket which is something I only noticed now in photos.


I'm not sure this is a permanent solution, but I love the mix of rustic + industrial right now. For a non-permanent solution I'd say I spent more than I should on the four pieces, so in order to make my money seem worthwhile I might just keep this look for a long time (maybe until we come across a great mix of price+look on some proper side tables).

Do you have DIY night stands?

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