Peter and I continue to learn how these precious two little boys we have can be very hard on furniture. We’ve been reminded that investing large amounts of money into our living room pieces may not be overly wise right now. (Fortunately, we live next door to a family that tends to throw away lots of furniture. I have four chairs, a small hutch, and a dresser in my house that I took out of their trash pile. It’s worked well for us!)
This weekend I decided to take a little gloomy garage sale find and change up it’s color.
This end table has been in our house for a few years now, and this isn’t the first time it has changed color.
Paint is an easy and rather inexpensive way to brighten a room or a piece of furniture. Since we enjoy buying used furniture, painting furniture has become a normal occurrence at our house.
Why do we like to buy used:
1. The money. It almost always cost so much less than buying new.
2. The stress. When our children or other visiting children dent, ding, and scratch our furniture, we aren’t concerned.
3. The remorse. Buying a $6 end table from a garage sale is quite different than a $300 end from an outlet. When I grow tired of my end table, I sell it again for $6 at my own garage sale. No remorse.
4. The creativity. Exploring a bit of creativity and painting over wood isn’t hard with a used piece of furniture.
5. The exclusivity. Often when we find a piece of used furniture, it’s a little on the rare side and something you can’t buy anymore in the stores.
This little simple end table came from a garage sale a couple years ago for $6.00. It was a dark and shiny chocolate brown. I quickly changed it over to Taos Taupe by Benjamin Moore. It’s a bit old and rickety. It doesn’t look perfect, and it never will. It probably has six layers of paint on it by now. And I don’t fret for a second when I want to repaint it.
+ Be sure to do your pocketbook a favor and always use primer first if you are painting a light colored paint over a dark colored paint. We’ve learned this the hard way. A gallon of Benjamin Moore and Olympic paint costs LOTS more than a gallon of primer. There’s no sense buying extra (expensive) paint when you can use primer first.
+ I ended up painting two coats of primer ensuring good coverage. The green paint I chose was a very very pastel color. Two coats of primer was a good idea for this project.
+ The color I chose is called Sea Mist green. It is from Lowe’s Olympic line of paint. Since I am not drawn to a high gloss sheen, I went with an egg shell finish.
+ The pale green paint covered well after two coats of primer. One coat covered very well. I did a few touch ups here and there, but one coat was pretty sufficient.
+ This project only took a few hours of time (minus the time it takes for the paint to dry.) I didn’t do any prep work on this table since it was a quite inexpensive table and a bit beat up. For most other painting projects, I take the time sand down the piece and clean it up.
If you have a hard time jumping into DIY projects, re-painting an inexpensive piece of second-hand furniture is a good place to start!