Painting Furniture: New Home Improver Project

Getting from this...

To this!  In just one afternoon.


Inspired By: thefrugalgirl.com

Before starting, I google'd many many sites trying to find a good color/procedure match for painting existing furniture to match Ikea's Brown/Black furniture.  I wanted to do what I could to use the furniture I had previous to my move rather than buying new.

My first purchase was a Makita belt sander:

At which point I needed to figure out what 1/4 sheet sandpaper is!  Thanks Google!  For those not 'in the know', you buy a regular sheet of sandpaper and cut it in 4ths.  Voila!  1/4 Sheet!

I followed the advice in The Frugal Girl's Blog and started with 100 grit sandpaper, then once the bulk of the stain was removed I switched to 150 grit.  

Sandpaper Block = Fail

I bought a sandpaper block to sand out the grooves.  I did not have much luck with this... I would recommend using a folded piece of sandpaper instead.

Some good advice from Google was to not continue sanding once the sandpaper lost its grit (or tore).  

So the table and legs were sanded:

While The Frugal Girl's Blog recommended a grey primer as the next step, I chose a brown primer anticipating that the color may show through a bit and make it closer to Black/Brown Ikea furniture than plain black.

If I were to do it again, I would use grey.  When the furniture is dinged, the brown primer is showing through.  I tend to think the grey might make it a little less noticeable.

Rust Oleum Painter's Touch Primer

The table was primed using several very light coats.  I think I did 4-5 coats.  The primer suggests to paint either within 1 hour of application or to wait 24 hours.

I don't have a lot of patience once I start a project so I opted to paint right away!

Primed and ready for paint!

I highly highly recommend Painter's Touch semi-gloss for this next step.  The paint was unbelievably forgiving and dries VERY fast.

The picture below was after the 4th coat.  I made sure to always paint in the same direction and to make sure that any oozing over the corners was brushed off.  The paint was always ready for the next coat once I finished painting all sides.  This was a VERY easy project!

And at last, I added the final coat of paint (all in all, about 4 coats for the legs, 7 coats for the top), waited 24 hours, and put the table back together.  It looks amazing next to my existing furniture!  I love it!

My favorite part is that the grain still shows through the paint, so you can still tell it's solid wood.

This was a practice piece to get an idea of difficulty level/end product to decide if I wanted to tackle my bedroom furniture.
This was my first furniture painting experience and it was *so* much easier than I expected.

New Home Improver easiness rating: 5/10
Main reason for difficulty level: being able to spraypaint lightly and evenly.

Stay tuned to see how the bedroom furniture turns out!