What you can do with a little Paint!!

Well I stated in my first post that I was going to do a post on upcycling furniture, home furnishings etc.  I have been out in my garage busily painting up a storm and having a great time!!  I love what you can do with a little paint and a few great undiscovered out-dated finds.  Here are a few before pictures for you to see.

One of the things you want to look for when painting home furnishings are the lines in the piece.  If you can look past the color and look at the lines - many things look unexciting because they are brown or just outdated - but when you paint them they look great!!

The light aqua I hand brushed because I liked the color and you can't find all the colors you want in spray paint.  I used a spray paint for the bright aqua candlesticks.  I forgot to take a picture of the candlesticks before I painted them but they were brown.

These pictures are before I have sanded them to add a distressed look and accent the lines.  I painted them with 2 coats of paint (hand brushing).  If you use spray paint it is best to spray several light coats as it will run if you spray too heavy.  If you are painting over wood you want to lightly sand the piece before you paint it so that the paint has something to stick to. After the paint completely dries take 80 grit sand paper and lightly sand the edges to distress the piece.  Wherever you sand will expose the underneath color and cause the lines of the piece to stand out.  Don't despair if you oversand and don't like it.  The nice thing about paint is you can always start again and repaint over the area you sanded too much.

This reminds me of a memory of the past.  We did a lot of crafts growing up and we had made dough art and we were painting our creatures.  I remember I had it looking just right and then decided to do a little more shading and thought wow, this shading is great and kept adding a little more until I had shaded way too much and it looked bad.  My mom said Oh well, you can just paint it again and start over.  I learned the hard way that less is more and it is better to start out with a little of shading or in this case sanding and you can always sand a little more.  (But don't feel bad if you have to start over - I have learned that lesson by trial and error!! -and yes - I have had to repaint certain items as I thought - wow - this sanding looks great!! and then ended up doing too much and had to start over!!)  The next pictures will show the result with sanding.

It's interesting the difference in color taking the picture inside and outside!!  They are the same candlesticks!!

 I forgot to take a before picture of these candlesticks but they were gold.

So before and after - as I said what you can do with a little Paint!!

Here is a preview of my next painting projects to come - I found this cradle at a thrift store for $5.00.  It was sitting outside looking quite forlorn and neglected.  I'm sure glad I found it and am going to rescue it.!! 

I found this cute desk at an estate sale and paid $20.00 for it.  I think I will paint it white, change the knobs and voila -  I will have a very updated adoraable piece of furniture.

Stay tuned - to see the transformation!!

I hope this post was informative for whoever reads it.  You can do so much with a little Paint and a bit of vision.  It is a great way to rescue something old - give it new life and also be thrifty!!  If you have any questions or need an opinion, just email me at rafoutch@gmail.com and I will try to help as best I can.  Happy painting!!