Re-finishing: Priming and Painting

"Prime" Time

Last Tuesday, I started the priming on the furniture!  My parents only had room for about half the furniture in the basement so I started with all the drawers and the two nightstands; it needs to get painted in the basement because it's too cold to do outside these days.  Anyway, this just left the actual frames for the chest of drawers and the dresser for later.  On Tuesday, I had enough time to get one coat of primer on everything. 

We are using Rust-oleum's Painters' Touch Ultra Cover Primer.  Another blogger recommended it and I've generally followed her guidance... 

We are also using the rubber band trick that is all over Pinterest.  Consider this a mini "Pin-tested, Nikki Approved" - you put the rubber band around the can so that you can wipe off your brush easily.  Conclusion: Works like a charm!

This is the collection of all the stuff that we started working on.  This is how it all looked after the first coat of primer.  We are using the gray primer since we are painting the furniture black - any dark colors, it's recommended that you use gray primer.  If you're painting the furniture a light color, you should use the white primer.

The drawer on the left has two coats of primer.  The drawer on the right has only one coat of primer.  If you look, the grain is still visible even through two coats of primer.  Also, you'll note that I didn't go crazy with the primer (nice thin coats) so the coverage on the first coat is a little sparse.  Between coats, check the surface because the primer will raise the grain of the wood so you may need to do a light hand sanding (220 grit or so is fine).


Aaron and I went over to my parents on Friday evening to continue working on the furniture.  We got a second coat of primer on everything.  It went a lot quicker with two of us, but still took a good hour to hour and a half to get it done.  The primer states that it takes two to four hours to cure.  Luckily for us, we had two hours to waste so we waited for the primer dry and then it was time for....



Painting!

We are using Rust-oleum's Painters' Touch Ultra Cover Semi-Gloss Black paint.  Again, the same blogger recommended it.  And I figured that it makes sense to use the same brand of primer and paint.  Both the paint and primer go quite a long ways and the quart cans are only about $8 at our local Home Depot.

(My apologies for the appearance of the can... I didn't take the picture until after we had been painting for a little while.  We are a bit messy...  Thankfully we have lots of drop cloths down on the basement floor to protect it, but the paint can got a wee bit messy!)



Aaron and I were able to get our first coat of black paint on the drawers and nightstands on Friday night.  Again, we are using very thin coats of paint.  You don't need to sand in between these coats unless you notice the grain is being raised again.  (I didn't notice any raising of the grain during the paint steps.)  You can actually see through quite a bit the paint, but that's fine!



We needed to let the paint dry for about two hours between coats.  We were out of time for Friday night so we went home and came back Saturday morning.

Somewhere around the third coat of paint, we were finally starting to have "black" furniture (see the picture on the right)!  The gray primer wasn't nearly so visible.  We were being as careful as possible to do thin, even coats. 

We got three more coats done on Saturday, for a total of four coats.  Aaron thought that was plenty, but I thought we needed one more coat.  My family was all together for my birthday celebration so we gathered some opinions.  The general consensus was that one more coat wouldn't hurt, with some saying it could use it and others saying it could be okay as it was.  I decided that another coat couldn't hurt and would only help, so I wanted to do it....


We went back on Sunday morning to get that final coat done.  We went over early enough so that we could let it dry for a bit and then move it up into the garage and get the other furniture to the basement. 

We were extra careful with the last coat of paint, making sure that our brush strokes were even and followed the grain of the wood.  It's hard to see in this picture but you can actually still see the grain in the wood. 

After coat number five (see the picture to the left), we were quite happy with the results!  It is a deep black and the semi-gloss is just right - matte paint would look cheap like laminate furniture and high-gloss would be too much.  Our painting isn't perfect but unless someone looks really closely, no one will know!  (If you come over and put your nose up to the furniture to see the mistakes, I'm going to get ya!)  There's just little imperfections here and there, but nothing major...

We still have to prime and paint the frames for the chest of drawers and the dresser.  We got them down into the basement so they warm up (they were in the garage which is colder than the basement) and I hope to start the priming on Tuesday.  Obviously I'm not done with the primer and the paint, but we will easily get the priming done before we finish our first can of primer and we might even finish the painting without opening the second can of paint!  So if you're keeping track of of costs, I only paid $125 for the furniture and the paint and primer only cost about $17 for both.  We did buy a can of spray paint for the hardware that was $7 so that puts us at a grand total of $150 for a whole bedroom set!  (Okay, fine, I bought another headboard for $70 and we have to buy a bedframe for about $40, so really it's $260, but stillll!!!)