Painting Furniture

See this dresser?  Yup.  This is it.  The reason for my current love for painting furniture. It's perfectly fine-if you like that 90s style look...OR, if you like that every piece of furniture in your ENTIRE house (the home your husband bought furnished! before you knew him) is the EXACT  same color, name brand, line...right down to the brass/gold/whatever they are drawer handles.  This is just not my style.  But, what was I to do?  This furniture is perfectly fine, looks almost new, in fact.  

the victim

I painted it.  Here is where I also insert that I have an awesome husband who says "go for it" even when it means possible irreparable damage to perfectly good furniture.

I hate to give a link to any of the (many) websites I scoured trying to figure out how to go about this....not because I don't adore these womens' tenacity, hard work, blogs, you name it.  I just don't know how blogs work, and, what if centsational girl (okay, there, I said her name) finds out THIS is what has become of her wise advice?!
Really, visit her site-it's amazing and full of awesome info and tutorials.

So, while she explains it better than I, here goes my tutorial on what ended up being not so hard!

         What you Need:

a piece of furniture (okay, just making sure I listed everything)
sandpaper-I used something like 150 and 220
primer-Zinzer the oil-based one
Floetrol
Latex paint 

an angled Purty Paintbrush

polyacrylic
twine or rope (I used for drawer pulls)  

Step 1 

I sanded.  I started out in the garage with a piece of sandpaper, then realized that a) this is messy! and b) this is going to take, like, forever! I decided to take the job outside.

I somehow conjured up an old sander from our garage.  My husband is a self-confessed NON-fixer-upper type so the Lord must have laid that sander amongst the garage muck.

As you can see, there was no method to my sanding.  I think maybe you are supposed to sand just up and down.  I used a rectangular shaped sander (see my expertise shining through here?), so I'm thinking I wasn't supposed to make those figure-eight patterns you see on the side.

Step 2 

I primed.  Again, I had no method here.  I just used what Zinsser oil-based primer, what centsationalgirl suggested (after wiping down the furniture) and hoped for the best.  Here is what I got:

see the primer in the top right?  that's the Zinsser to get.

I used the other type of Zinsser in a later project (the not oil-based one-I don't know if that makes it water-based..seems like it, but, anyway, the different color can), and it did NOT work as well on furniture.  So, use this type.  I, by the way, have used the spray can Zinsser and it works great...AND I still have this bucket 1/4 or more full having used it for many projects.

Step 3

Okay, just assume if I forget to say so, I sanded between each step.  So, sand and wipe clean before you paint.  I wanted this as smooth as possible so I used the 150 and 220 grit sandpaper just because this scarry-ed me ...remember I was ruining beautifying this thing.

Step 4

Well, I just painted.  I painted two coats of latex paint that I had added some Floetrol in per, again, centsational girl's advice.  It helped the latex paint go on more smoothly.

okay, I said I used a paintbrush.  I must of used a roller, too.  see it in the background?

here is the body of the dresser painted..it is a blue-grey color.  really

.

 So, here is the painted job which only left ...

Step 5 

I sanded the piece to how I liked it (you can see I sanded down to the white primer...I like that), and then I painted two coats of polyacrylic top coat.  I could have used polyurethane, but this is what I picked up at Lowe's.

And, here is the final product.  I'll get better pictures, but right now my garage is crammed full of furniture and this is squeezed in a corner because I tried my hand at using a paint spray gun and I had to protect my first little project.  This will, by the way, eventually go in my son's room, just as soon as I can get someone to help carry it back up the stairs...it might sit here awhile.

see the rope drawer pulls I made? cute, right??

Yeah, I know.  I told you I squoooze it in a corner.  This is the best I can get for now, and my photos aren't too hot as it is.  But, won't this look cute (umm, handsome and oh-so-grown-up) in my 9-year- old son's room? 

What do you think?

Do you have any suggestions for me?  I would certainly love any advice you've got!