I’ve been so excited to get our giant furniture haul underway on the blog. I have so much to show and tell. If you’re new to the blog, check out Our Giant Furniture Haul. This post is about the desk and chair which is the only piece of furniture I knew for sure we would flip and sell. We already have a desk so it didn’t make sense to keep in our home.
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When you refinish a piece of furniture you always want to start with cleaning it off and sanding it down. How much sanding depends on the individual piece. This desk and chair were in pretty good condition so all I did was take a wet rag to it and sand it in a few areas.
The next step is to prime. Even though my paint had primer in it, I wanted to be extra safe since the furniture was yellow and give it an extra coat of primer. I use Rust-Oleum Corporation Water Base Primer
in white. When you paint it on to your furniture it is not a smooth, perfect finish (sorry I don’t have a picture) but rest assured this is okay. Once you paint on top of it everything will smooth out.
Once the primer dries you’re ready to go wild! Someone was giving away an entire box of paint samples for FREE (and you know I love free!), so I picked my colors from this box. I wanted the insides of the drawers to stand out a little and chose a medium gray tone, while the outside of the drawers, the desk and chair were all painted white. I painted two coats of each, letting them dry 30-60 minutes inbetween coats.
After the last coat of paint I let the furniture sit overnight before adding a protective finish. I use Minwax Satin Polycrylic Protective Finishes
. Painting a protective finish adds a little sheen to the furniture as well as a protective layer (if that wasn’t already obvious).
The last step was to add hardware. The drawer’s handles were beautiful on this furniture but really, really discolored and gross looking. I soaked them in my crockpot with dish soap for a few hours and when they were cool, scrubbed them with Shane’s an old toothbrush. Once they were dry I spray painted them chrome. I love Rust-Oleum Bright Coat Metallic Color Spray
in chrome. It has a natural look and one coat of spray paint is enough. This spray paint made the hardware look brand new again.
Here are the final pictures before we sold the desk and chair:
