DIY Beginners: How to Paint and Reupholster Furniture!- #11

Are you a beginner at painting furniture and reupholstering furniture? This episode is for you! In this podcast episode, we're going to cover how to get started with painting your very first piece of furniture, and upholstering it! We'll answer the questions: What paint should you use? Do you need to sand or prime first? What tools and supplies do you need to get started? Grab your paint brush and a cup of tea or coffee and let's chat about it!


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SHOW NOTES:

Blog posts and videos mentions:

• When Should You NOT Paint Wood Furniture?
• Which Paint is Best for Furniture?
• How to Make Your Own Chalk Paint?
• 10 Common Furniture Painting Mistakes and How to Prevent and Fix Them

Tools and Materials Mentions

(I participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and other affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com or affiliated sites).

• Fiddes & Sons Clear Wax
• Simple Green
• Oil-based primer to prevent bleeding through (by KILZ, not Zinsser)
• RYOBI orbital sander
• BB Frosch chalk paint additive
• 150-grit sandpaper
• 220-grit sandpaper
• 600-grit super fine sandpaper
• Arrow Fastener T50 Stapler
• T50 staples
• Wood filler

Transcript

Hey, what's up! It's Serena Appiah from ThriftDiving.com, which is a podcast, a blog and a YouTube channel that helps you decorate and improve your home without sacrificing your budget style or environment. Of course, we always talk about paint, power tools, and thrift stores. And today in episode 11, we are talking about paint.

Yes, this is something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. And we're talking about this from the standpoint of being a beginner. These are the people who, they see painted furniture on Pinterest. They love it. They've got some big, heavy wooden pieces in their home and they want to start painting furniture.

But how do you get started? What are the steps that you need to go through? So if you are someone who's an intermediate, someone who's got tons of experience, maybe you might want to pass this episode. if you want to listen, please do, but we're really coming from the standpoint of how do we help newbies get started.

And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And the reason why this is coming up, is because this week on my YouTube channel, if you're subscribed, if you're not, I would love to have, you look for me there, Thrift Diving. But this week I posted a video of a really simple project and it's something that was a lot of fun to work on.

And I thought this is just a little footstool.  a lot of people aren't going to be inspired by this. So how could I make this more inspiring for people watching this? And I thought I've never actually done a video or a blog post that just walked someone through, step-by-step how to paint their very first piece of furniture.

And I also included some other information that I think when you're a beginner, nobody really talks about these things, right? Like where do you paint? What kind of furniture paint do you use? These are the questions that we're going to talk about today. Hopefully this podcast isn't going to be too long, but we're going to try to cover all the things that I covered in the video and also the blog post.

So I'm going to just review the blog post and we're going to hit some very important things like where should you buy your paint? What kind of paint should you use? And do you need to sand, and do you need to prime? These are the questions that I get asked by people all the time.

And I usually lead them back to different furnitures that I've painted over the years, but I've never come from the standpoint of, if someone is brand new, what are all the questions that they might have? How do we address those? So welcome to episode 11. Cause that's what we're going to talk about today.

So let me just tell you really quickly, my brief description of how I got started with painting furniture. If you listened to Episode One, you will find out how Thrift Diving came to be, The story of Thrift Diving. And I'll just tell you, in a few sentences. Basically in 2010, we bought an old house and we spent all of our money buying the house, we had no money left over to decorate, and I'm not kidding you when I tell you that I literally forgot to keep money aside for the fact that we were going to have to decorate. When you move to a new place, a lot of times you want to redo everything that is going into the new place, but when you're buying your first home, your first single family home, your first real home, there's not a lot of money left over to redo everything.

So I found myself going to the thrift store, buying furniture, and this was not the first time that I had started redoing things, in fact, just the other day I came across a picture of my very first project ever. This was when I lived in my condo, it was probably 2006. I was pregnant with my first son and I had gone to the thrift store and found a really old gliding chair. And if you looked, these gliding chairs were two, $300. I was having my first baby. There was no way that I was going to be able to pay that amount. So I think it was maybe it was $25, maybe even less, and we didn't have a backyard or anything.

So I pulled this furniture out onto the patio, put some plastic down and I spray painted it and reupholstered the cushions. It looked great. And so that was my first experience of redoing furniture, but I didn't know anything at this time, 2006, you didn't really see people online talking about painting furniture.

So it wasn't anything that I could reference online to see whether I was doing it correctly or not. So when we moved into this house, 2010, you were starting to get a little inkling of people doing these sort of projects online. And there was just a handful of people who were well-known in the quote unquote DIY business.

And I followed them because I thought, wow, they're painting furniture. I've done this, but there really wasn't a lot of information on how to do it. So anyway, the more that I started to read blogs, I learned that there was this thing called chalk paint. Annie Sloan chalk paint. It was like the brand that everybody was talking about.

I had to get myself some. And the first time that I tried it. I thought, is this how it's supposed to look? Because it looks really crappy. I just put one coat on. It looks horrible. You can still see the wood. what am I doing wrong here? anyway, we're going to talk a little bit about some of those things that you're going to come across when you're painting your wood.

It may not look that great and how we can get over some of those humps of doing our first project. And I also want to point out to a lot of times it really is about your self-confidence, right? Because we don't want to mess anything up. So we're going to talk about that as well. There's a lot of things we're going to talk about today.

Anyway, I'll probably be jumping from, thing to thing the thing I'm sorry. I don't have a script in front of me. I just know this is what I want to talk about. So we're going to try to stay on task here. All right. So the first thing I want to talk about is picking your very first piece of furniture.

And this kind of gets into what I just touched on is the self-confidence because what happens a lot of times, the mistake that people make when they're choosing their first piece of furniture, they're getting something that's either really big, maybe a dresser, a table or a desk that's huge. Or they're wanting to paint something that's expensive. Something that if it doesn't turn out, they're going to ruin it. And I think that when you get something that's overwhelming, that it takes more time, more effort than what you expected, or there's a real risk of you losing it, it almost prevents you from moving forward because you are so afraid that you're going to mess up, that you just don't want to move forward.

So usually what I tell people is when you're painting your first piece of furniture, find something that's not too big, something that's not going to feel overwhelming and something that's not going to be very expensive, because the more paint and the more materials that you need to buy your cost is going to go up.

So the project that I just posted on my blog, ThriftDiving.Com and on my YouTube channel, is a little footstool. A friend of mine. she's not really a friend, but she's a blogger friend. She's in the blogger community that lives here in Maryland and her mother-in-law was moving out, downsizing and she needed to get rid of some furniture.

So I went over there and took a look and because I don't have a lot of space left in my house, it's very funny how, when you go from in 2010, when you had like an echo in the room, because there was no furniture to now, it's like you don't have a wall to even put anything else. It's really funny how that happens.

So she was showing me some bigger pieces, which I couldn't use, didn't have space for, but there was this little footstool that didn't take up hardly any space. And I knew instantly that this would be a perfect project to give my mom. My mom just recently started redoing her bedroom and she loves sunflowers.

So when I saw the stool, I thought, wow. This would be great with a nice coat of white paint, reupholster the top with sunflower fabric. It would be great. And then just present it to her as a gift for her room. And this stool had some pieces that were cracked, that's not really a problem.

We'll talk about that in just a moment. But back to what you should be looking for, if you are a newbie and you're just starting out, find a piece of furniture that maybe somebody gives you like this, where if it doesn't turn out, it's really no sweat off your back. You're not going to cry because you quote unquote ruined it.

And I don't really think that you're going to ruin it, but if it doesn't turn out the way you expect, nobody is going to come knocking on your door, Hey, why did you ruin, Grandma's, 1930 dresser. you don't want to paint something. That's going to be like a family collection. In fact, there's a blog post.

That you might want to check out and also a video too. It's called, When Should You Not paint Wood Furniture? We're not going to go all into that today. We will maybe talk about that on a future podcast, but you can listen to the video and read the blog post. I'll leave a link down in the show notes, but when you're finding furniture, make sure that it's not valuable for your first piece.

Make sure that it's small enough for you to pick up. So I usually tell people small footstool, a dining room chair. You might have about six dining room chairs that need to be done. But if you do just one and give yourself that small of a task, it won't be so overwhelming. Now you also want to make sure your furniture is in good condition.

Now here's the thing. When you find furniture makeovers that require like a lot of repairs, a lot of stripping and sanding.   Let's say you want to refinish it. That's a lot of work. It's a lot of work and it's not that you can't do it.

You could, but again, if you're a newbie, most times you're going to have a little bit of hesitation. You're afraid you're going to mess it up or do something wrong. So if you find a piece of furniture that's in good condition, you don't have to worry about doing a lot of repairs. You can just skip right to the painting and have it been something that you don't mind practicing on.

A small footstool, small chair. Maybe if you go to the thrift store, they've-- I don't know about your thrift stores, but I always see these little magazine racks, right? Who even reads magazines anymore? But I always see these little wooden magazine racks, and I think it would be perfect as a first project.

It's something that you can sit on your tabletop and get your paint and just start working and you don't need to have a huge space to paint or anything like that. So again, small. Cheap. In good condition and something that you don't mind practicing on. That's what I would say for the criteria. So now that you have picked out your first piece of furniture, now what comes next?

Typically there's some materials that you're going to need to get started with painting furniture. And the biggest thing is the paint that you're choosing. Now, when a lot of times when people are starting to get started with painting furniture, they go to like Home Depot or Lowe's or one of these big box stores.

And they just paint it with wall paint, regular wall paint, and they just put it on a piece of furniture. That's not really the way to go. That's not the way to go because that paint is really formulated to work on your walls. And it's not formulated to work on furniture straight out of the can onto your furniture.

It's just not going to work very well. So what I always recommend people to do, there's a couple things that you can do. You can buy paint that is specially formulated for furniture, and there's tons of brands. Some of the better known brands, as I mentioned to you is the Annie Sloan chalk paint Rustoleum actually put out a new-- well I say new, but it's probably been out for a couple of years.

They have one called Chalked. I literally just use this for the footstool that I told you about. And I think my opinion on it, I liked it. I did at first, I didn't like it. It seemed like it was a little too thick, but with a lot of these chalked base paints, you can add some water to it to make it a little bit more like pancake batter and not like a thick pudding, which some of them are.

So that's actually a pretty good one. And I liked that you can just go to Home Depot and buy that $20 right off the bat. You don't have to wait for shipping or anything like that, just go in and buy it. So that one actually did work pretty well. That was my first time using that. I had used a brand of paint called Beyond Paint.

They actually had sponsored some of my projects in the past, but what I do like about that paint is that again, you can open it right out of the container, and they actually recommend that you use a roller. And for them, what I usually will recommend is to use a small, like a four-inch I think it's maybe one quarter.

I think it might be like a one quarter inch roller or maybe it's a three, eight, three, eight inch roller. It's one of those small itty-bitty rollers. Those work very well for this paint. If you use a brush, you could get some brush strokes, not really a big deal. We'll talk about that in a little bit with brush strokes.

Some other brands of paints that you may be familiar with. Amy Howard, she makes a brand of paint. She's got a one-step paint. In fact, somebody emailed me about Amy Howard paint. They said they didn't like it too much because they wanted to sand the paint down a little and Amy Howard paint just doesn't sand very well.

We'll talk about that in a little bit because some of these paints actually have top coats added into them. So unlike Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, where you've got to add like a wax or a top coat to it, some of these paints have it built in so that you don't have to add anything to the top if you don't want to. 

Another brand of paint that I really like is called Mineral Fusion. I have done a couple of projects with them. I really liked their paints. They have a top coat built into it. So if you don't want to use a top coat, you don't have to. Another one that I really liked is called Salvage Dog, and I believe they had a show.

I think it maybe it still comes on, but they've got a brand of paint that if you look online, you can buy it. And I think they're coverage is a little thicker. So as you can see, there's tons of brands of paints. And I think what people sometimes get held up on is which one do I choose?

And I always tell people, find a couple that have good ratings, like Annie Sloan, chalk paint the Fusion Minerals, and just try different brands of paint to see which one you like. Now you might be wondering which one do I prefer? I can tell you; I don't even really have a preference. I have done some projects with Beyond Paint.

I've done some with Mineral Fusions and I think each of them have their own benefit. So I don't have a clear winner. I actually liked very many of them. So I will use sometimes whatever's available. Like I said, this weekend or this past week I went to Home Depot and bought the Rustoleum. I think it was like, maybe it's called Old Linen.

That's the one and whatever the white is. And I just bought it there. And I said I'm going to use this for the stool. And it worked out well and I probably will use it again and recommend it to people as well, because you can get your hands on it so much easier. You know what I mean? Whatever paint you use, definitely get yourself a good quality paint.

Now there are some other things that you can do. There are some bloggers who have said you can take regular wall paint that you get from, the paint counter at your big box store and add a little bit of, oh gosh, what do you call it? I'm having a brain fart right now. But you can add in some of the sanded grout, is it sanded or non-sanded?

I might be the non-sand. It I'd have to look. I'm going to put a link down below. to how you can make your own chalk pink, because it is possible that you can mix in some things and make your own chalk paint, and people have done it and it's worked well for them. Now, there is another brand that I have used, and I think that it's worked really well.

It's called BB Frosch. I think that's how you pronounce is it Frosch or Frosch, BB Frosch. This is a nontoxic additive that you can add to regular wall paints. So instead of paying, let's say $20 for Rustoleum Chalked, you can actually just go get a gallon of paint for $20 that you would use on your wall,

flat is recommended and add in some of this BB Frosch, and it makes it like a chalk paint. So with the additives, it makes it a very hearty paint that you can use to paint furniture. I've done a couple projects around my house with paint that has BB Frosch in it, and it's worked well. It's held up nicely.

Again, those are various options that you have. So don't feel like, if you hear one blogger talking about a particular brand, that's the brand you have to get started. That's not the case. 

One thing I will tell you is that you definitely want to have a nice synthetic brush. And here's the thing about brushes. If you are using a chalk base paint and you're using a synthetic brush, you're more likely to get a smoother finish than if you're using a natural bristle brush. Now that depends on what the look is that you're going for. If you want something that has brushstrokes, great. That is more of a shabby chic look.

Sometimes you'll see bloggers come back over a piece of furniture that has a lot of texture like that with brush strokes, and they'll use a dark wax. Well first, we'll go over it with a clear wax and then they'll go over it with a dark wax. And what happens is that dark walks will start to lay in those canals of those brush strokes.

And when you wipe it away, it'll settle into those brush strokes and give it a nice vintage-y aged look. So sometimes people will go with the synthetic to get a smooth look, but they'll also go with the bristled, like those China brushes that have like hog hair in order to get more brushstrokes.

So me personally, I tend to love furniture, that is more modern. I don't like a lot of shabby chic stuff, but there you go. Have both paint brushes. So depending on the piece that you're working on, you can choose which look you're going for. Clear wax is definitely something that you should have.

If you're working with a chalk based furniture paint.  There's a brand called, and I hope I'm pronouncing this correct; it's called Fiddes and a friend of mine blogger friend of mine told me about it. It's a clear wax, put two coats over your paint. Let it dry. Maybe about two or three minutes.

And then take a clean lint-free cloth, and you just buffed that baby. And it will start to turn your paint so smooth. Like your furniture piece will feel like a baby's butt. It's so smooth. And again, most furniture paints will make their own top coat. Some of them we'll have wax.

Some of them will have a top coat that you can just brush on with a brush. It just depends on which paint you're working with. For example, Mineral Fusions, they have a top coat built in, but if you're doing something like, let's say you're doing a dining room table someplace, that's going to get a lot of arms rubbing against it.

Cups set down on it. You want to protect that paint. So you may use Mineral Finishes. Mineral Finishes yeah, fusion mineral finishes, but then you may add two of their top coats to the paint to make it even more hearty. So again, it just depends on the brand. Now here's one thing I will say, be careful using top coats that are not made for that brand of paint.

And the reason why is because there are some top coats, now there's water base and there's oil based, but there are top coats that will turn your white paint yellow. Believe me, this has happened to me and it is a nightmare after you've painted this gorgeous white, whatever it is, and you go over it with a top coat that was not formulated for that paint.

Next thing you know, it starts turning this blotchy yellow. It's horrible. And a lot of times people will say that only happens when you put an oil based. top coat over like a water-based paint. No, that's not really true. I have a video which I will link to down below showing that I use just a water based top coat and put it over some paint.

And guess what? Within a few minutes, you start seeing the yellow coming through. I will leave a link down below where you can see that as well as the video that I posted called the 10 Common Furniture Painting Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. So it does happen with water-based top coats over water-based paint.

So just keep that in mind. That's why I always say to people, if you're putting a top coat, look for a brand of paint that makes their own top coat, because it's less likely to happen if it's formulated for that paint. 

All right. Some other things I would say having your toolbox would be some Simple Green cleaner, or vinegar and water.

So whenever you're doing furniture, definitely make sure you're cleaning it off. Sometimes there's oil, there’s dust and all kinds of things that can interfere with your paint sticking. It's happened to me many of times where I thought something was clean, but it really wasn't clean and Simple Green is a degreaser. So if there's any grease on your furniture, it'll take it off. And so once you wipe it off, then you can take a clean towel and just, wipe the Simple Green off. But that's pretty important because if you try to paint over something that has oil that you can't see, the paint will see it.

And you'll be wondering, why do I have these little patches that looks like the paint is not accepting. So I will mention one other thing that I think you should have on hand. And we'll talk about this. It's a, an oil-based spray primer. And the one that I like is buys Zinsser. And of course, I'll have a link down below in the show notes for that.

But sometimes what happens when you're painting furniture is that no matter how many coats of paint you put on that furniture, it just tends to bleed through. And you will know it when it happens, because you'll start seeing usually it's like a pinkish or a brownish color that starts coming through your paint.

And you'll notice it if it's a light colored paint. If it's a darker color paint, you may not notice it, but there are some pieces of furniture, especially like mahogany. They have these things in them called tannins, and I don't fully understand what tannins are. So I had to look it up before we got started with this.

And it said that plants have tannins that make them unpalatable. And they’re in wood. They're in grapes. They're in all these different products. You see it in wood, when you go to paint this and you're like, wait a minute. Why in the world do I have this color coming through? No matter how many coats of paint you can even put primer on it, water-based primer, and it still comes through.

So what I tell people is in your DIY toolbox, when you're getting started with painting furniture, always have a can of oil-based spray primer. And this is for those times when the paint's bleeding through, or let's say you didn't realize that there was some sort of silicone residue leftover on your furniture, because you'll see that as well.

If you try to paint over silicone, you'll start seeing these blotches where you're like, wait a minute, this paint is not sticking. What in the world. And what I have found is that just a light coat of spray over that silicone or over that bleeding through will seal it. And you will be able to paint over it after that with your water-based paint.

And you can actually see this in the video that I posted with the little sunflower stool make-over. The bottom of the piece had like some sort of water damage. And I had put a coat of paint on there thinking. nobody's going to turn this over, but you know, you want your furniture to look good on the bottom too.

So I just put a quick coat of paint there. And even though it covered it up, I came back about an hour or two later, or actually, no, it may have been the next day. And you saw that same stain. So a couple of sprays of the Zinsser took it right out and I was able to keep moving. So definitely have that in there.

And of course, when you're painting furniture, make sure you have towels, rags. I think the lint-free ones are best. You can usually buy them in a bundle at the big box stores and you want to have some old bowls and stirs. And wood filler is your number one friend, because a lot of times furniture will need some sort of filler before you move on, before you paint it, it could be maybe a gouge in the wood, or let's say you're doing a furniture make-over and you want to change the handles, the pulls on something.

Sometimes with pulls they'll have two screws, right? So you've got two holes. Maybe you just want to put a cute little knob, which has only one hole. So you got to cover up the other holes. And so that's where wood filler comes in, because you'll want to fill that.

And then sand it smooth and be able to paint over it and have it just blend in like there was no hole there to begin with. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. There's so much we can cover here. I'm not good doing a deep dive. We'll do a deep dive as we go on in future episodes, but just telling you some things you need. 

Definitely get yourself some 150 grit sandpaper and 220 grit sandpaper.

And it's always best to have a screwdriver or a power drill. When you're working with things that are upholstered, maybe there's a seat that needs to come off. You need to remove some screws. If you've got a screw driver or a power drill that comes in handy and also clamps, sometimes again, you have to make repairs.

Oh, and you also need some wood glue. Now, did you know that wood glue is actually stronger than wood itself? Yeah, it's true. It's amazing. When I read this, I thought, no, that can't possibly be, but it's true. Whenever you glue a piece of wood and you let that wood glue completely dry. If you try to break that joint apart, you're more likely to break the wood than you are the wood glue.

So you definitely need that in your toolbox. Now there's probably some other things that you need there, but we can't cover everything. 

Serena: [00:25:50] All right. We’re going to cover basic upholstery tools. I will say that one of the things that you definitely need is the Arrow Fastener T 50 stapler.

Now they did sponsor the little sunflower stool makeover, but that's not why I'm recommending them to you because this is something even before I started working with them before they were a sponsor, I had this tool in my toolbox. It's like the number one stapler that you would use if you're going to reupholster, let's say a chair, right? And you take the fabric off and you're putting new fabric on. You definitely want to have a stapler.  It's simple to use.  And I know as I get older, it seems like it's harder to dislike really grip things. So if you're somebody that has arthritis or hand grip problems, Arrow Fastener actually makes other staplers where instead of squeezing to engage, you can actually push and that's much easier on your hands.

 Yeah. So for basic projects where you're just going to do some basic upholstery, make sure you've got the stapler, make sure you've got some T 50 staples. They come in a variety of staple sizes. And I think what I found helpful is that the three eight inch staples are pretty good.

They go into the fabric and go into the wood so definitely have those on hand. And then of course, with fabric, try to use fabric that is made specifically for upholstery, because I've made this mistake in the past.

I've reupholstered things with fabric that was not sturdy enough. And so if somebody is rubbing up against it, if it's a footstool and someone's putting their feet on it, it's going to need more wear and tear ability if that's a word. So make sure that you've got fabric that's made for upholstery and not just, something else.

Also, you're going to need a staple lifter or staple remover. A lot of times you're going to be removing old pieces of fabric. And so you're going to need to be able to remove those staples. So have that on hand and also batting is something that you definitely need when you're reupholstering. A lot of times cushions will already have batting in them.

But if you listen to my episode, I think it's episode number nine, when I talked to Rory McCarty from Bug Boys, we talked about bedbugs. We talked about termites, all these things. It makes me look at reupholstering in a whole different way, because I can't even imagine getting an old piece of furniture and just reusing what somebody else already had on there.

Like just thinking of the bugs that could be hiding. And that's why a lot of times when I go to the thrift store in the past, I have gotten chairs. I've gotten things that, now I'd be looking at questionably, but if you are getting something from a friend, even a family member from the thrift store, take all the old stuffing out and get some new batting, get some new cushions.

You can go to, I think the big box stores, they sell it, go to the craft stores they sell and just go to Amazon too and get some new cushions, some new batting. Don't reuse that old stuff. Cause you don't know what's going to be hiding in there. And of course scissors and a tack hammer. So those are the basic tools and materials.

Now let's talk about a couple of things here in regard to where will you make over your first DIY furniture make-over. Now not everybody is lucky enough to have a garage or a spare room, but the thing about furniture paint nowadays, it's non-toxic. Now, I don't know if there are certain brands that are no VOC, or if there's some that are low VOC and I believe the VOC is volatile or Volvo volatile, I should have looked this up first volatile, organic compounds.

And these are the harmful things that could be like the off gassing of materials of chemicals and things. Now there are some paints that are low VOC and there's some that are. no VOC. And I think when I'm painting my house, I tend to choose paints that are no VOC. And I think that's something to look at when you're looking at furniture paints, maybe try to choose some that are no VOC.

If they exist, that's something I'll have to look into myself. But the main thing is that all of the furniture paints that are on the market today for the most part are at least low VOC. They don't have smelly odors so that you're able to work inside your home. So if all you have is your dining room or your living room, you can do your first furniture

make-over there. Make sure you have something down to prevent paint spills on the floor, of course, but you can do it inside. I tend to work on projects in my driveway. And I know sometimes it looks crazy from my neighbors. You know, they look at me like, there's this one woman who lives across the street to the right.

And she's really sweet. She doesn't go by that often, but I will run into her during the summertime when I'm out there working on projects and she always slows down and she's like, it's always great to see you working on things. And I'm like, yes. So people they will stop and notice that you're working on something, but you might be inspiring someone.

So you never know. So find a place, even if it's a small patio, a balcony or your bedroom, if that's all you have, you can do it. Sometimes I have refinished things just in the location where it's in, If I'm painting my desk, I don't have to move this outside. I'm just going to remove everything off the top and I'm going to refinish it right there, where it is.

So don't feel that you need to have a ton of space to refinish furniture. 

All right. So let's actually talk about what the steps are to get started with your very first piece of furniture. We covered some things, but let's put it into perspective here in terms of what you do first, second, and third. So the first thing that I usually will tell people is to thoroughly inspect your furniture.

This is not just because of bedbugs and roaches or anything that could be living in your furniture. That sounds really nasty, I know. But sometimes those things can happen. There is a dresser that I bought. It was a dresser that it was actually two dressers and inside of the dresser, there was no bugs, but I saw these little insect shells, and somebody later said, Oh, those are roach shells.

And I'm like, what? Like I've never seen roach shells. That is that even a thing? Now, thankfully there was no roaches. I did thoroughly inspect it, but I did see that there was something in there and it made me, yeah, I gave it the side, like what did I bring in here? But definitely inspected to make sure there's no bugs, no roaches. But also when you're inspecting your furniture here in Step One is you're also looking to see what are the tools and materials that you'll need.

We covered some of the basics, but there might be something more specific that you need, and you need to make a list of what that is, because what can happen when you're working on your project is you get to a point when you need that tool or material, and you can either stop what you're doing and go to the store and get it, it's available. 

Or it might be something you need to order. And what can happen with your first project, and this-- believe me, this happens-- once it comes, you've already forgotten about the project. You've already moved on to the next. And this is how we end up with all these projects sitting around in the garage, in the bedroom, because we got sidetracked because we didn't have all the materials we needed.

So if you can list those things out first and preemptively gather everything you need, you'll be less likely to set that project aside for like next year. 

Also, too, when you're inspecting your furniture, it will be a good time to see what repairs and fixes need to be done. And sometimes when you're looking at it to see what repairs and fixes that you need, you might even get to the point where you're like, this needs too much work.

I don't think this is going to be a good project, especially not a good first project. But at least if you inspected upfront, you'll know whether it's something that you can tackle. So that's Step One. 

So step two is actually fixing all of the repairs. This is where you'll need the wood glue and the wood filler.

Sometimes you may need some extra screws. In the case of the sunflower stool, it had a couple of cracked legs that just needed to be wood glued. So I put a little-- well, I say a little, I put a lot of wood glue in there and just made sure that I clamped it and I actually left it for 24 hours. And this is where you need to be patient because the longer you leave it, 24 hours, the more solidly dried that glue is going to be, especially if it's in a place where, or maybe like a joint where if you don't have that glue being solid and you go to try to sit on it or something, it could break again, it could break worse. So give it some time to dry. So again, give it 24 hours, come back to it the next day. And then you're able to complete the project. So definitely do the wood glue. 

If there are gouges in your wood. So let's say there's gouges on the top. You want, what you want to do with the wood filler is you always want to pack that wood filler in, but you want to make sure that wood filler is actually like a big glob, even higher than the surface, because what'll happen is as that wood filler starts to dry, it's going to shrink a little bit and you want that to be larger than the hole or the gouge that you're trying to fill.

And if you try to initially put in just as much wood filler you need and smooth it right away, when it dries, you're still going to see that gout. So always put more wood filler than you think you need. And once it dries, then you'll be able to take maybe 150 grit sandpaper, or 220 grit sandpaper, and you'll be able to smooth it out.

And it'll smooth it down to where you won't even see that it's a part of the surface and then you'll be able to paint over it. 

All right. So now that the repairs are done, we're going to move on to the next step, which is cleaning your furniture. And remember I talked about using the Simple Green. Definitely use that or get some vinegar and water, wipe it down.

But if you're using Simple Green, make sure you go back with a clean towel, with just water on it and just wipe everything down. Don't skip this. I can tell you when I first started painting furniture, this is so dumb, but I used to sometimes just not even clean it. I just wanted to jump right in and just start painting.

I would never do that now. That was really not smart. So I know other newbies may do the same thing, especially if it looks clean, you may try to do that. Don't do that because you want your paint to stick, and this is the best thing to get your paint to stick. 

All right. So the next step is to take your furniture apart.

Now, you don't always have to take your furniture part. It depends on what you're working on. If you are doing something that has doors or drawers, remove the drawers, take the doors off. This is where you'll need a screwdriver or drill. Remove the hardware. I have been very lazy in my DIY, especially when I first started, where I would just paint over something.

Let's say I'm painting a vanity. I have been like lazy enough where I wouldn't even remove the doors. I would just open them up. Paint it really good. And then let it dry and then close them babies back up. And I would even go, I'd even paint over the hardware. I wouldn't do that if it was a project for a client, I don't work with clients in that way.

But yeah, I know if you've seen my old videos, I probably have done this. And you thought if she has painting over it, I can too. No, just go ahead and remove all that because it really does look very immature to just paint over the hardware. Like it's not hard to remove it. So make sure that you paint that without the hardware on there.

Now, if your project is something that has one part that's painted the other part that's, reupholstery like my stool. I would say, go ahead and reupholster your furniture now while that glue is drying, that's something that you can do, again, if you have repairs, but I would recommend that you go ahead and start reupholstering your furniture.

So let's just talk about what a simple reupholster would look like. So generally what I do is I remove all of the old pieces of the batting, the cushions, all that. And on the inside, you'll typically find a piece of wood. Usually it's about, let's say half an inch thick. That's pretty common if you're doing a simple chair or stool, and you'll want to make sure that you're having enough space to reupholster, first of all, so a dining room table is good, even if you're on the floor and you're going to want to lay your piece of wood out over the batting.

Typically you're going to want to be able to fold that over about, let's say two inches. So you're always going to cut out your batting and if you're using lining fabric or your good fabric, a good two inches, maybe even three inches larger than what the wood is for that chair seat.

And that's so you've got enough to be able to fold over. So when you're using your staples, you're just going to go around and pull this batting into place. And this batting is to give you some softness because when you're sitting on a chair, the last thing you want to do is just sit on a hard piece of wood, right?

So if it's upholstered, it should feel comfortable for you. So make sure that you're getting some batting that's thick, but not too thick. And I think the one that I use for my stool, might've been, I don't even know how you measure batting, but it was thicker than what was on there. So I would say it was probably about half an inch thick or a little less.

All right. So once you secure that batting into place, you'll trim off all the additional bulk of the batting after you staple it into place. And at the corners, what I generally do is try to remove some of that bulk from the corners. Think about it, at the corners, when you're reupholstering, you're taking fabric from both sides, you know, let's say the bottom and the side and you're overlapping it.

So now you've got all this bulk at the corners. So try to remove a little bit of a bulk before you start stapling it into place. But don't remove so much that you don't give yourself any room left to staple. Don't do that. And what I like to do is, I like to clip the corners. So as my piece of wood is laying there with the batting, everything stapled up and the sides,

what I like to do is, just clip the corners. Okay, give it a nice clean edge and then just staple it in the place. 

Now here's the thing, with lining fabric. You don't always have to use lining when you're upholstering, but it actually, isn't a bad idea because the more layers you have, the softer your seat is going to be.

So if you're doing a chair, you might want to get some lining fabric and just add that lining in order to get more comfort. But also it helps to keep that batting in place, right? So you don't have your fabric, that's like your good fabric, rubbing against that batting, breaking it down so that lining helps to create a barrier between the batting and the good fabric.

So do the same process, lay out the lining, and then just staple it into place, removing some of the bulk from the corners. And you can see the video and the blog posts, when I did the sunflower stool, in order to get a visual, if you need that. 

And then of course attaching your pretty fabric. Now here's the fun part. And here's where things can go really wrong. One thing that I learned in upholstery class is that you always want to find the center of your fabric and the center of whatever you're upholstering. And the reason why is because if you find the center of the fabric and the center of your project, and you put that staple there first and then pull tight, everything else falls into place.

So you'll see in this project, what I did was found the center of the fabric and found the center of the chair of the piece of wood that I was reupholstering, and then just pulled it tight towards the corners. And you should get a nice tight fit on your fabric just by following that rule. Okay. So remember when you're upholstering, staple the middle, find the center of your fabric, find the center of whatever it is that you're reupholstering and apply a staple there and then pull towards the corners. The corners always come last. And that's what I learned in upholstery. If you try to do the corners before anything else, the fabric is going to shift. It's going to be crooked. It's going to be wonky and that's not the look we're going for, especially not on our first project.

Remember we want wins so that when we look at this project, we're like, wow, look what I did. I came in to do the next one. We don't want it to be like, oh my God, I totally screwed up this project. And now I never want to DIY again. That's not what we're going for. 

All right. And here's another thing too, to keep in mind when you are reupholstering during your first project, is think about the fabric that you're using.

If you are using fabric that has like a certain motif that you want to be right in the center of that chair. Plan it, so that motif will be right in the center of the chair. Okay. Again, find the center of your fabric or the center of that motif, line it up with the center of the chair seat that you're reupholstering and staple it in the place.

And it's okay to flip it over, back and forth as you're stapling around, pulling things tight, to make sure that doesn't move from the center. Same thing when you're working with anything that has a pattern that could be like obvious that it's wrong, like stripes or checkered patterns, anything like that, I would say, stay away for your first project.

Find something that's not going to be so obvious if you're a little off or if it's a little crooked. All right. 

And then in terms of how you move on to the next part, most parts of a chair, I, for the most part don't really ever think about the bottom, but if whatever, you're upholstering has a bottom that needs to be covered up, you can usually get some of the lining fabric and cover it up with tacks, staples, but you can make that raw edge disappear by covering it up with a lining fabric.

So again, you don't have to do that depending on what you're upholstering. But for this project, it definitely needed some lining fabric. And I just use some of the furniture tacks that were on the project when I first got started. 

 Oh, here's one more tip with upholstery. When you turn it over, do a pinch test. Take your fingers and just pinch around the seat, around the upholstery. If you can pinch that fabric, that means it's not tight enough. You need to go back and pull it the corners a little bit more because you shouldn't be able to pinch.

And that's a really good way to find out whether or not you pulled it tight enough. So if you didn't, if you didn't do it properly, if it's still a little too loose, then don't take everything out. Try to keep those center staples and start pulling again towards the side. Okay. And when you're done, of course, trim off all the extra

All right. So let's talk about painting your furniture. So again, you're doing a small piece here. It shouldn't take you very long to do. The big question that people have is, do you have to sand your furniture before you paint it, do you have to prime it before you paint it? And I say the answer to that is yes and no. There are conditions, and I will tell you what those conditions are. 

Let's talk about sanding furniture first. So if your furniture is badly chipped, or if there's areas where the wood is gouged. Again, and you need to fill that with wood filler, then yes, you'd have to do some sanding there.

You don't want to paint over badly chipped furniture because it's going to look like chipped paint and not the good kind of chipped paint. We're not talking about that kind. So those are two instances where you definitely would need to do some sanding. I've also painted things where the top was really pocked, and bumpy, or maybe there were like sticker residue or something on that piece of furniture that if I try to paint that, it's going to look horrible. So I will take a, an orbital sander. Usually I recommend RYOBI and not because they're paying me. I used to work with them. They used to be a sponsor, but they're no longer a sponsor, but I do think that their tools are affordable. 

And so I would definitely recommend that you go with RYOBI, get an orbital sander that doesn't cost very much money, put on a 150 grit sandpaper onto the orbital sander and very smoothly, very slowly, run that sander over your surface. It doesn't have to, if you're going to be painting it, doesn't have to be completely smooth and free of finish.

It just needs to be smooth. So keep that in mind. Now, when you don't need to sand furniture, that is when your furniture is in good condition. There are no chipped areas. It's in good condition. Yes, there may be finish on it. There may be a top coat on it, but here's the thing. Most furniture paints will stick to almost anything.

Most furniture paints will stick, and I've seen it stick to glass, wood, plastic metal. If you're using a furniture paint, it works very well. Here's one condition. Also, if you are going to be doing a piece of furniture that's getting a lot of traffic.

Let's say you're doing a dining room table, or you're doing a desk where your arms are going to be rubbing against it. You're going to be sitting things down on there constantly. I would say, you know what? I would do a little bit of light sanding before I paint. I wouldn't necessarily prime, but I would do a light sanding before I paint.

Because I've noticed in my experience, those pieces of furniture always tend to, the paint just tends to wear down. So I think anything that gives that paint a little bit more grip then, yeah, you definitely should do a light sanding, but you don't have to sand down to the bare wood. You just want it to be nice, smooth, but have a little bit of grip.

But generally, if your furniture is in good condition, don't feel like you have to sand over that. 

All right. Let's talk about priming. Do you have to prime before painting? Remember earlier I told you about bleeding furniture and old stain coming through. That's definitely a time when you do need to prime before you paint. It doesn't mean you have to prime everything.

It just might mean you have to prime that location. So with that little sunflower stool that I did and the bottom with that water stain or whatever it was that was coming through, I could have put multiple surfaces of paint and it would have kept coming through, but just a few spritz on the bottom, helped prevent that from coming through. So in that case, yes, I had to do a little bit of priming, but I didn't have to prime the legs or the sides. Just that part that was problematic. 

Now, if you're painting something that is really a dark wood. What I have learned is that sometimes priming can work to your benefit here because remember, like furniture paint, when you're doing two coats and that's generally what I recommend, two or three coats,

the first coat is kind of like priming, right? You're doing that coat. And if you've ever seen the first coat of a furniture paint, it tends to look real crappy. You're seeing the old wood coming through, it looks streaky and you're like, oh my gosh, this doesn't look anything like my favorite blogger.

What's going on. It's not you. It's the paint. It's the wood. But what I have found is that sometimes if you have a really dark wood, sometimes it actually helps to do some priming beforehand because there's less coats of your good, expensive paint that would have to go on. And if you're going to prime, I would definitely say, do a little bit of sanding.

Okay. So cases where I would maybe recommend this, if you have really dark kitchen cabinets that you are painting, if you're doing a dining room table that's really dark and it's going to get a lot of traffic, I would definitely say sand that down little, do a coat of primer. And this would be regular primer, not the oil base Zinsser primer, especially if it's not bleeding, I would say, go ahead and do that.

But yeah, but generally, if you're just painting a piece of furniture, that's not going to get a ton of wear and tear. It's not something you're using every day. Maybe it's just a bookcase in the corner, maybe a dresser that, you don't really have anything touching the dresser. You're not scraping glasses and cups across it,

you don't have to prime. It just does two or three coats of paint and you're good. 

So that's why when people say do I have to sand? Do I have to prime? Yes and no, it really depends on the piece of furniture and how you're going to use it. So I hope that clears up some of the questions that you've been thinking about regarding this.

Alright, so when you're actually painting, let's just talk about a couple of things. I usually recommend that people stand their furniture upside down when they get started. This is easier to paint because what happens is that if you're leaning over, you're going to get, you're going to get some things wrong.

You're going to miss some parts. You're going to miss a leg. You're going to get tired. You're going to get cramps in your neck. So just go ahead and turn it over, especially if it's a small piece. Turn it over and start painting from the bottom up. Do your two or three coats on the bottom, finish the bottom and then turn it right side up to finish the top.

It makes it much easier, especially when you're trying to get around edges of tables. Those are very hard to see if you're only just painting it while it's standing up. Again, use two coats, three coats of paint. is preferable and let it dry in between maybe about an hour or two in between, and then do your second and third coats.

And that's pretty much it with painting furniture. Now here's the thing. There are some brands of paint that will not sand very smooth. Now chalk paint like Annie Sloan, it sands so smooth. If you paint it, let's say you do two coats and you want a nice modern finish and you wanted to have very little brush strokes.

You would take some 220 grit sandpaper once it fully dries and just very lightly, in circles, just smooth that baby out. And you'll start to see it dusting. Wear a dust mask, of course. You'll start to see it dusting up. But when you run your fingers over, it's so smooth. It feels so good. And when I was working on the sunflower stool make-over, I was sanding out the Rust-Oleum and I could not believe how smooth it felt.

It was like so exciting. You have no idea. But again, if you're working with some paints, like   Fusion Mineral, or if you're working with Beyond Paint, those have top coats built into them. They're not made for sanding. So you have to know the look you're going for before you choose your paint, but you can't go wrong in terms of messing up.

You may try paint and say, Oh, I wanted to say on this, but I see that I can't. Okay. Next time I'll choose a different paint. So that's okay. All right. So when you're sanding your paint, again, used like 220 grit. I actually, for this stool used, gosh, it could have been a 600 grit and that you're not going to find that at the big box store, you're going to have to go to Amazon or somewhere online to get a really fine finishing sandpaper.

But I highly recommend it. And once you've sanded this chalk pain down and it feels so smooth, the next part is to add wax. Now, the wax that I told you that I like to use again, I believe it's called Fiddes. I'll leave a link down below. But you'll add just a little bit of wax and you'll see the paint start to darken up a little bit.

And after it dries in, let's say two to three minutes, take your lint-free cloth and start to buff that wax. And you will see the shine just come alive. It's just, it's such a fun part of painting furniture. I love it. And then I'll do, usually I'll do maybe like one or two coats, but again, if you're doing a piece of furniture that's getting a lot of traffic, like a dining room table or a desktop, coffee table,

I would do maybe like even three coats of wax. Let it dry thoroughly in between maybe a couple hours or something. So painting furniture is not just a, Hey, I want to go to the garage and just boom, boom bam. just, get it out. It doesn't work that way. There are processes to this and there's layers, especially if you want it to last, because what can happen with painted furniture?

If you don't properly add the top coat in the wax that you need, it can start to wear down. And it doesn't look very good. And it's not the kind of wearing where you're like, Oh, it's shabby chic now. Now it just looks, it looks bad. It doesn't necessarily chip, but it just starts to wear down. For example, at a desk, you'll start seeing it right along the edge where your arms tend to move over the desk when you're typing or whatever.

So definitely add two to three coats and you'll want to go back over it probably in about another six months. Wax doesn't last forever. So you want to make sure that you're waxing it every six months. And again, you could do dark wax. There are some people that love dark wax, and they will go back over the clear wax,

cause you always got to start with clear wax first. And then if you want to do the dark wax, you'll come back in cracks and crevices. And in those brush strokes with dark wax to make it look aged in different areas. 

All right. So once you're done there, you are completely done with your project. There's really nothing else for you to do.

Just connect the seat to the base of the chair or the stool that you're working on and that's it. So I really hope that this was valuable. I know this was a lot longer than what I had hoped. I really hope this would be 30 minutes, but sometimes you just have to add extra information that's going to help people move on with their first project.

Again, I want to talk about how it's really about confidence. And if you choose the right project, that you're not afraid to mess up, that you can just practice on and say, well, if it turns out, it turns out if it doesn't, it doesn't, I've learned my lesson. Now let's move on to the next project.

It makes it easier for you to get past that first project so that you can keep DIY'ing, because I always say crafting is like therapy. I am most happy when I'm working on a project and I see that it's turning out and sometimes I run into problems, but I'm able to troubleshoot and figure something out.

And that's the fun part of it because it makes me feel like I'm building my skills, but then it also makes me feel really good that I was able to overcome whatever that problem was that piece of furniture presented to me. You know what I mean? All right. So in the next episode for Episode 12, wow, we're doing really good here with the podcast. For episode 12, we're going to talk about getting started with power tools.

And this is going to be for beginners who don't know anything about power tools, how to set up power tools so that you're safe. What should you even buy? We're going to talk about that in episode 12, next week of the Thrift Diving podcast. So be sure to come back. Also, if you like this podcast, please do give it a rating in Apple podcasts, Google, wherever it is that you're listening to podcast.

Please give it a rating. You could even say a few words cause I do check. So I appreciate any feedback that you give me, and you can always find me at ThriftDiving.Com and over on my channel, if you're not subscribed, find me at Thrift Diving over on YouTube. All right, guys, I will see you next podcast.