Before: a little scratched and dented.
I was thrilled to have them when I found a matching set,
but I figured I couldn't hurt them at this point.

Before I even touched the nightstands, I drew a 1/4 scale model of them.
I used my handy measuring tape, calculator, and ruler to help me along.
I drew everything in pencil then traced it in sharpie.
I made lots of copies, and sketched a few ideas on my 1/4 scale models.

I finally decided on argyle and my sketch gave me an idea
of what I wanted it to look like. As you'll see, I deviated a bit
from this in my actual production

I used a pencil to mark the top of the nightstand into 8 sections horizontally and 4 sections verticially.

I connected my lines to make boxes.

I drew my diamonds within each box

...taped, and painted. (If anyone is actually doing this, I would reccomend
picking your background color and painting your entire nightstand first.
It would be a lot less work)

When you remove the tape, you should hopefully have some clean lines!

Tape the next section and start painting!

And tape and paint again....

Between coats of paint...

I worked on painting the drawers.

Ta-da!