make a boring nightstand look fancy

awhile back hubby and i went to ikea to get some stuff for our guest room.  i had a vision of what i wanted our guest room to resemble and had to make some adjustments when we found out the white bed frame that i wanted wasn't in stock and there was no way we were going back to ikea any time soon.  i originally wanted a white bed frame and a nightstand that i could paint a color like yellow or some sort of teal or something.  but i settled on a black bed frame, a white dresser and i picked up an unfinished night stand thinking that i wanted to paint it a color still.  but after envisioning it in my head i felt like it would not go well together if each piece of furniture in the guest room was a different color.  so i settled again on white for the nightstand and went to lowe's to grab some swatches of white.  so. many. shades. of. white.  i painted the nightstand and felt like it was really boring.  i wanted to add some grasscloth wall paper to the front of the drawer like this:

but i wasn't able to purchase a small amount of the grasscloth, and i didn't feel like spending more on the wall paper than the nightstand.  i remembered that i still had some paintable wall paper that from a previous project, my old dresser.  so i decided to use that instead.  i cut it, adhered it and painted over it.  i wanted to frame it with small molding pieces, so i went to lowe's and picked up an 8 foot long trim.  i don't have a miter saw unfortunately but saw that lowe's has miter boxes with a small saw for about $12 so i grabbed that, too.  i measured and did all that and cut the wood with the miter box and saw.  it turned out pretty rough because i think the saw wasn't ideal for the soft wood that i picked up.  but i read that you can caulk the corners before painting to hide any flaws.  so i did that.  and for the most part it looked ok.  i glued the trim on using gorilla glue and then painted the front of the dresser again.  i finally decided on a handle/knob that i found on urban outfitters' website and ordered it.  that's all there was to it.  so here is the before:

pretty plain, huh? and here is the after

the finished product

cute knob from urban outfitters

the paintable wall paper that kind of looks like small beadboard

so there you go.  maybe someday down the road i will re-do it, i like to change things up a lot cause i get bored with the same look forever.  some of the things i learned while i fumbled through this project:
-i need to get a miter saw, the miter box and backsaw that i bought are not super easy to work with and take about 5 times longer than if i used a miter saw
-when using gorilla glue, make sure place something heavy over the thing you are gluing or use clamps, this ensures that there will not a gap between the thing you are adding and the substrate.  i stupidly did not do this and so the trim pieces dried not flush to the drawer, there is a small gap, so i will have to go back and caulk that at some point to make it look more seamless
-caulk is awesome and can hide minor imperfections
-urban outfitters has really cute housewares
-don't be afraid to start a project even if you don't know what you are doing, you'll figure it out and even if you mess up there is usually a way to fix it