Furniture Painting 101: Step One

 Hey there!  I hope you guys are doing well.  It's been a long time and life has been crazy.  Since I'm no longer selling painted furniture or furniture paint anymore, I thought I would share some tips and tricks for painting and refinishing furniture.

I know there are many paint brands out there that call themselves "no prep" paint.  Unfortunately, that just is not true.  All furniture no matter how big or small needs to have some prep work done in order to have a beautiful finish.

So first things first, you need to give your furniture a good cleaning.  Using a degreaser product is the best place to start.  Now you may be thinking why do I need a degreaser for a bedroom dresser?  The answer to that is FURNITURE POLISH!  Furniture polish is full of oils and waxes that can leave a greasy build up on your furniture pieces.  That greasy build up will act as a resist and keep the paint from sticking to your piece.

You can use products like TSP- tri-sodium phosphate, Krud Kutter, or Simple Green.  

I also like to use a green scour pad.  It really gets in there to removed the build up and it also does a little pre-sanding.

Make sure you rinse your piece well after cleaning and allow it to dry thoroughly. 

Once your piece is completely dry, you can give your piece a light sanding to give it a little tooth for the paint to adhere to.  You can do this with a 220 grit sanding sponge.  If the old finish is really shiny and smooth, you will want to bust out the power sander and give that finish a good scuffed finish.  The boutique furniture paints will not stick to a shiny surface without scuffing or using primer.

When you are finished scuffing/sanding, wipe the dust off or use an air compressor to blow the dust off and you are almost ready to paint.

Check back for the next steps in the furniture painting process!

Happy Painting!

Tricia

Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in Luckett's Green

This is just a quick post to show off a piece that I recently finished using Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in Luckett's Green.  

When I purchased this piece, it was covered in two different colors of spray paint.  A bright blue was covered with black and then distressed with the blue showing through.  Definitely not my style.  

I knew I wanted to try to stain the top if at all possible.  My husband set to work trying to strip the old paint off with a heat gun.  Usually the paint hardens and chips right off.  This time it was a gummy, sticky mess. Yuck!  So we busted out the Zinsser Magic Strip Citrus Action.  Hands-down the best stripper out there!

I stained the top with Minwax Dark Walnut and finished it with several coats of wipe-on poly.  I painted the base of the table with Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in Luckett's Green.  I wanted this piece to have some natural distressing, so I did NOT use the bonding agent when I mixed it up.  I finished it off with Miss Mustard Seed's Hemp Oil.

Isn't this just a lovely color?  It reminds me of Spring and we surely need a little Spring weather around here.

Do you like a chippy, distressed look or do prefer a solid finish?

Be sure to follow The Painted Chest!

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