Guest post: Furniture painting do's and donts by Maggie

Guest post: Furniture painting do's and donts by Maggie

• 9.01.2011

We're on our honeymoon!

I'm so excited to have some lovely guest bloggers this week while husband and I honeymoon in Hawaii. I'll be back after Labor Day!

Today, let's welcome... Maggie of ByMaggie.com!

Before and After: or, All You Need is Paint

Hey, folks! Maggie here. I'm a huge fan of Suzannah here on Adventures in Dressmaking, and thought I'd lend her a hand while she's out for the honeymoon!

Of course, it had to dovetail nicely with the week I'm moving, and you know what that means. (Okay, maybe you don't.)

Furniture renovation.

I had initially planned on building a brand new entertainment center for myself, customized to fit my 32” TV, set of TV speakers, receiver, Wii, DVD/VCR, cable box and whatever else I needed to hook up. Even had a plan drawn up, and carried it in my purse with all the dimensions written down. I may still build it – I'm pretty proud of that design.

But I hit craigslist anyway, and found this piece for $30:


Now I'm not a huge fan of blonde wood, but I looked at the measurements on the listing and the measurements in my purse and realized that my TV and my good speakers would fit perfectly on the top. Can't pass that up, so I didn't.

I just knew I'd have to paint it.

It was a good chance for me to exercise my own design choices. I knew that with this new living room, I wanted to use deep browns, bright greens, and mustardy yellows. Earthy and bright. And suddenly I knew that I needed this TV console to be bright green.

So I set out to find a color, and decided on a bright cheery green called “Medieval Cloverleaf.” Yes, the name played a part in my choice. What can I say – Dutch Boy has the best paint names out there. I ended up having the swatch color-matched and got a quart of Behr semi-gloss to do the work.

I mixed two kinds of primer from my mom's basement and here's where I screwed up in a couple of ways. I didn't look at them to learn that one was oil-based and the other was acrylic, so I ended up priming the piece with an awful, ugly, grey-brown paste. Learn from my mistake, people, or end up with a piece that looks like this:


The secretary is another project, but I used the same primer. The secretary isn't able to be shown yet because, well, the primer got really sticky and disgusting and I couldn't work with it as well by the time I got to it and it turned out BAD.

But the TV console turned out okay after a quick sanding, and I got back to work, adding the brilliant green over the top with a small roller. I did a couple of coats, and let the green sit for a couple of days.

And then, as they say in the pictures, something went terribly wrong. I tried to put the center shelf back in, and it nicked up the paint on the inside and peeled it. I started swearing. My mom's dog hid behind another piece of furniture in the garage. I alternated between telling my mom to help me and telling her to go away. I sat there, flashlight and screwdriver in hand, acknowledged the problem, and reinstalled the shelf with her assistance. I had to do some patch work on the paint:


...and I ended up leaving the scratched-up parts in the back as they were. Not a huge problem, as they'll be covered up by the components anyway.

And then I waited. And after a few days, it was time to add the doors back on, and tomorrow, this piece will be moved to its new home in the basement of my roommates' house, where I'll be living for the forseeable future.



Once it's moved, I'll be posting pictures of my new place on my blog, www.bymaggie.com, along with my #teamphotoblog pictures and the stories of all the other projects I'm working on!

Because what's life without projects.

Thanks for the lessons, Maggie! I, too, have made (and hopefully learned from!) mistakes with furniture-painting. Learn by doing, I guess!

See you next week, readers!