Painting wood furniture.
muumuu
Please help! I have a matching bedroom set in guest room that I want to paint a creamy/antiquey white for a shabby chic look. Its a honey maple wood color with just a standard square head/footboard. It's quite nice..I just don't like the color, and I don't want to stain it. I want it painted. Has anyone painted wood furniture before? Have you had luck? Any tips/tricks? Thanks!
Dutch Mother
I have painted many pieces of furniture as well as my (once ugly) kitchen cabinets. It is a great way to freshen up your furniture w/out the expense of buying new! First you need to decide on if you want to replace the hardware (hinges, knobs, handles, ect.). For a shabby look I paint my hinges in a sloppy way so they look worn (don't cover them completely with paint). New handles/knobs can be fun, but that is entirely up to you. If you have handles now and want knobs you will have to fill the handle holes after removing them and drill new holes for the knobs, so that could be a pain. But for simply painting the furniture, you can do the following: begin by taking medium grit sandpaper (look for 'General Use' on the packaging- you can find it in the paint supplies section at Wal-Mart) and sanding your furniture all over (only the areas you are painting- if you want to leave wood exposed here and there for accent like a tabletop, DO NOT sand it). You don't want to sand clear to the wood- you are just 'roughing up' the finish so it will hold the paint and not just peel off. You want the finish to be dull. Use your fingertips- if it feels slick, sand some more. Once you are finished sanding, take a dry fluffy cloth (I use an old terrycloth hand towel) and wipe all of your sanding dust off. Check again to be sure the finish is dull as the dust will make it look dull but it may be shiny underneath. Repeat the sanding/dusting steps as needed. Once the surface is clean, apply a semi-heavy coat of Kilz primer (for furniture you may not need a full gallon can- you might get by w/ a quart if you only have a few pieces) with a paintbrush. Your brush strokes should follow the grain of the wood. (As w/ all painting projects, a good quality brush is great because you aren't left w/ bristles stuck in your paint, but I buy mid-grade because $15.00 for a single brush seems outrageous to me!) The width of the paintbrush depends on how fast you want to go and how flat your surface is. On a flat-front cabinet a 4" wide brush is fine, but if it is a piece w/ a lot of trim a more narrow brush would be better. (Less drips.) Watch for drips in your paint- sometimes paint will pool in corners of trim or around hinges and once it's dry it's difficult to fix! Let the primer dry completely. Apply your desired paint over the primer, once again following the wood grain. If you want the wood covered completely a second and possibly third coat may be necessary, but sometimes a little wood peeking through enhances the shabby look. Now comes the matter-of-taste part. If you really want to go shabby, after your paint is completely dry take your sandpaper (same stuff) and lightly sand the corners of the furniture. Basically I would recommend sanding the corners that would naturally see abuse over the years so it looks as though they have (been abused). Be careful not to sand too much- do a little at a time and just stand back and look at it to see if you like it. Also sand behind your knobs/handles as they would receive wear as well and it will enhance the look even more. You want just a little of the wood exposed so the furniture looks, well, shabby! You don't have to do this, but it is neat once done. And if you don't like it you can prime the spots you sanded and paint them again. After 'knocking off' your corners as described above, you can then take an old rag (as lint-free as possible- t-shirts work well) and apply a stain (I use Minwax oil-based stain in Golden Pecan) on top of your paint, rubbing it on in the direction of the wood grain/brush strokes. (If you are using stark white paint [something I would NEVER do] Golden Pecan will yellow it, so you may want to go w/ a different shade.) You can rub off as much of the stain as you want, but the more you leave in the hinges and crevices of the wood trim the better it looks. Some people don't use stain (it's a matter of taste) but it just brings out the curves of the furniture and makes even ugly hinges look great. I use stain over my paint even if I am painting my furniture a color (I did a red dres
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