a little over six years ago i painted my very first piece of furniture and today i'm going
to be fixing all of the mistakes that i made and giving it yet another fresh makeover i
can hardly believe that painting furniture has been my full-time job for the last six years
but here we are and this is the piece that started it all we had just moved into a new
house and had no furniture and a very tight budget so i hit up our local thrift store
and found this dining room set which consisted of a little china cabinet and the matching buffet
i watched all of the painting tutorials that i could find on youtube grabbed some chalk paint and
wax from lowe's had no idea what i was doing but dove right in fast forward to today this little
china cabinet has had two very rushed and sloppy paint jobs has been dragged across canada and is
just ready for another freshen up i've got lots of brush stroke texture and patchy spots to deal with
i've got messy edges and painted over hardware i don't have any room to drag this out to the
garage right now so i'm actually going to be working on it right here in my living room
dining room it should be a relatively quick and easy process so let's get started
i don't understand why
you better come off of here
ah broke the seal there we go
i decided that i wanted to remove the decorative mullions from the doors they're just a little too
traditional for the new look that i want so i removed the trim that held them and the glass
in place and i'll re-secure this glass after i'm done painting with some clear silicone
okay technically my next step if i were dealing with a piece of furniture that still had its
original factory finish on it would be to clean it with a good degreasing cleaner to get rid of any
grease or old furniture polish residue that is on the surface that's going to
inhibit my paint from making a good bond but because this china cabinet is already painted
and i happen to know that it was sealed with wax i need to be a little more hardcore and
break through that wax coat that's on top of the paint before i can clean it to do that i'm
using some odorless mineral spirits but plain old rubbing alcohol from the drugstore works
great for breaking up furniture wax as well i used a rag soaked in the solvent to scrub
as much of the wax layer off as i could and then i washed everything off with some degreasing cleaner
next up is sanding and i happen to have a really expensive really fancy sander from surf prep
and this is the kind of sander that you invest in when you are working on furniture or cabinetry as
a full-time job if that's not you if you are just working on the odd diy here and there you can do
sanding by hand absolutely go to the hardware store grab a sanding block in
probably a 180 to 220 grit just to smooth out the surface or scuff up the surface if you're dealing
with the original finish but if you are going to be doing diys somewhat frequently or you just want
to save yourself all of that elbow grease i would say it's definitely worthwhile to pick up a small
electric sander whether that be a small triangle sander or a five inch random orbital sander
they're just going to cut back on the time and the amount of elbow grease that you are putting into
your projects tenfold one other thing that i want to make note of is that my surf prep sander hooks
up to my shop vac so it collects a lot of the dust and since i'm working inside my house today
that's a big factor if you're going to be standing indoors you're going to get dust so if you can
take pieces or your whole project outside to do the sanding or just keep your vacuum nearby so
that you can kind of manage the dust collection as you go i'm using some 180 grit paper to smooth out
as much of the brush texture as i can and also remove any spots where i have a lot of paint
built up from the previous paint jobs that's causing the doors to rub or just looks messy
and now that i've made a total mess i am going to grab a fresh microfiber cloth just to wipe off any
dust that is still on the surface i'm going to soak my hardware in a solution to start breaking
up that paint and then i think i'm going to call it a day i collected all of the hardware pieces
and tiny screws in this pyrex dish so i didn't lose anything and now i'm going to let it all
soak in some plain white vinegar and hot water from the kettle to start eating through all that
gunk i left my mixture sitting on the counter for the afternoon while i ran some errands and
then i broke out my bar keeper's friend and a brass wire brush a little bit of scrubbing
took all of the paint right off of these hinges and most of the tarnish off of the poles
when i was done i rinsed everything in some clean water and just laid it out on the counter to dry
the next morning i was ready to start with my new paint job i decided to refresh the inside of
the cabinet with fusion mineral paints casement white and the outside of the cabinet is going
little whale blue since i can't spray in my living room i'm using my zebra square brush to get into
all of the smaller spots and i just found these stahlmeister rollers that give the best smooth
finish that i have ever seen from a roller they're a little more spendy than the ones that i usually
pick up at home depot but they give a way better result so i definitely think they're worth it
in between my coats of paint i just tucked all of my stuff
into a plastic grocery bag to keep anything from drying out
after getting two coats of white done on the inside i rinsed out
all my gear and then started putting some paint on the insides of the doors
and here is your friendly reminder that the first coat of paint
is always terrifying and always looks absolutely terrible that's completely normal
and i'm pretty sure that since i'm putting such a light color over this
dark green it's gonna take me three coats which is also totally normal so i've done two coats now
on the back of the doors and before i do my third and final coat i'm just going to give them a very
light sand with some fine grit sandpaper just so that they're extra smooth
so
before i got any further with my paint i remembered that i needed to get all of that gross
old felt out of the bottom of the drawer so i took it outside and filled it up with some hot water
i let that sit for like a minute just to saturate into the felt
and then i dumped out all the excess water and let it keep sitting for about 10 minutes to
loosen up the glue underneath then i grabbed a putty knife just to help me get the first
corner started and the whole piece of felt peeled right up once this is dried out again
i'll just come back and sand out any of the glue residue and this drawer will be good to go
back to painting the white was dry enough to put
some low-tack painters tape down and then i just continued on with my beautiful baby blue
right
all right it is day number three for this china cabinet and apparently i am dragging my heels
but i think today i can get it all wrapped up and put back together i managed to get two coats of
paint on everything last night so i'm gonna do my smoothing sand and then do my final coat of paint
and i did remember while i was laying in bed last night that i completely forgot about the
drawer out in the backyard so i'm gonna drag my sander out there sand the glue residue out of the
bottom of that drawer and then get that painted as well and then i think i can start reassembling
um
i scraped off all the old paint around the edges of the glass
and then put it back into the door frame then i just put a nice
bead of clear silicone around the edge and that is going to hold this glass in place
so
the last thing i'm going to do is just add a little bit of this wise owl furniture
salve which is a hemp oil and beeswax wood conditioner to the inside of my drawer okay
so
my
you