How to Paint Furniture Step by Step Guide

Reuse..reuse…reuse. Why replace when you can reuse an old piece of furniture to bring it up to date. Everywhere you look, there are articles and information about repurposing, recycling, and reusing.

I have a confession to make to you, this is a new concept for me. I am one for replacing over reusing…and replacing over fixing when an item gets worn or goes bad.  Replace…replace…replace…. I know what you’re thinking….it’s people like me who are destroying the environment. No judgement please….this is a judgement free zone 🙂

Now that I’ve disclosed one of my dirty little secrets to you…you will be pleased to know that I am trying to change my ways. I took on a new challenge – to paint an existing piece of furniture instead of replacing it….yikes…how will this turn out?

I was in need of a coffee table for our kitchen area fireplace. I wanted a round contemporary looking piece of furniture for the area to coordinate with the dark stacked stone we had installed on the fireplace face.

Since I already had a small coffee table from Pottery Barn that was perfect for the space in terms of size, I decided to attempt to paint it. This is my first time attempting to paint a piece of furniture. The table was brown and I wanted a black table. I have painted cabinets, walls, and moldings but had not attempted furniture.

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Here we go! For this project I used the following items:

• finishing pad (HERE)
• ammonia (HERE)
• clean cloth
• small roller (HERE)
• paint brush (HERE)
• paint (HERE)

I started by lightly sanding the table to remove the glossy finish.

I wiped the table using a clean cloth, with a mix of 2 parts water to 1 part ammonia to remove the dust and dirt from the table that sanding had left.

Now comes the fun part- painting! I bought a disposable small roller kit for the project. Because the paint is oil based, the roller and brush would be very difficult to clean. I started at the bottom of the table and worked my way up using the roller and the brush for hard in between spaces, like the round groove on top of the table.

The project was going well, I was happy with the ease of painting this piece of furniture.

I used 2 coats of paint on the table, allowing each to dry overnight.

I was very happy with the results of my efforts. It was easier to do than I thought, and turned out better than I anticipated. I may take on more projects like this!Have you updated any furniture, would love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping in.