Today I am sharing a project that was done by a friend of mine, Jennifer! She refinished an old vanity in her house into something pretty that would spice up her room. I don't have any experience in furniture refinishing, but she's giving us a few tips today! Hopefully I will be finding old pieces like this that I can refinish for myself. I think it works best when the wood is old & icky, otherwise you wouldn't want to cover up the wood with paint. (At least my husband, the woodworker, would say this!)
Here are the details of her process, in her own words:
1. Clean the vanity with an all-purpose cleaner. Tape around the mirror. Take off all the knobs and the seat pad.
2.
Start painting with a large brush in long strokes (a small roller would
have worked better on the flat surface but I didn't have one). I got
the paint from the "oops paint" section ($7 for the gallon versus $30!!)
so I don't know what the color is called. It's is close enough to what I
like. It's a primer and paint duo in an eggshell finish and the guy
there told me it's okay to paint directly onto wood surface without
sanding or primer (which has proved to be right, at least so far. If I
were to choose the paint myself I probably would buy a semi-gloss finish instead of eggshell). I
painted the inside of the drawers as well. For the most part, I only did
one layer of paint and it went on very well. I didn't have very much
time to work on it so I just did a little here and there. I did have to
take down the mirror to paint the poles and sides of the mirror. When I
was letting it dry, I added some details here and there with a regular
small paint brush with a semi-gloss white paint I have left over from
other projects.
3. I gave it at least a day to dry, then I used a sanding pad to distress paint off everywhere, especially around the edges of the details I like.
4. I read from a blogger how she loves Feed N'
Wax for painted furnitures instead of a wax paste. So that was what I
used. It's very liquid-y and seems a lot easier to use compared to some
tutorials on wax paste I watched on YouTube. It even smells nice! It's a
blend of beeswax, carnauba was and orange oil. I just wiped it on very
generously with an old sock (or lint-free cloth). Let it dry for at
least 20 minutes and wiped off the excess with another old sock.
5. I put the mirror and seat pad back on, and put in some new knobs I got
from Home Depot for about a dollar each and it was finished!
I've
been putting cups, bottles and keys on the vanity and the wax seems to
protect the surface pretty well, yet it doesn't feel greasy at all. I
probably would have done a few things differently but for a newbie and a
first-timer, I'm pretty satisfied with it. I also mod-podged some
wrapping paper I got from Daiso (a Japanese dollar store in Alderwood
Mall) to all the drawer bottoms. The color and pattern matches the color
extremely well (I love green and metallic gold together).
Thanks, Jennifer for sharing your awesome project! I am inspired. :)
