I bought some pretty nice bookshelves from my friend who passed away. She had these nice shelves that were pretty narrow in depth which is what I was looking for. The scale was perfect but I didn't care for the color or wood grain.
So, first step, sanding. You don't have to sand long and hard, just enough to take the sheen off. You can see from the picture below, the roughed up shelves.
The next step is the stain blocking primer. I did just one coat on these shelves and it worked out fine
After the primer is dry, start with your finish coat. I mixed my own custom color from cans of paint I already had laying around. It saved me from having to go out and buy an entire quart of new paint. One thing to remember when mixing your own colors, mix enough because if you run out, it will be really hard to get the exact shade again. I had no problems on this project but it's happened before
After applying a couple of coats, let the piece dry. These shelves looked really nice like this but they were a little 'flat' looking for what I wanted so I did a walnut stain wash over the entire piece. It gave it a richness you can't otherwise achieve.
As you can see, I live on the edge...staining on my bedroom carpet but you may want to make sure you completely protect the surfaces you are painting on. Rubbing the stain in is easy but does take a little practice to get your technique down. You can't see from these pictures, but I let the stain pool a bit in the edges of the trim and along the corners. It adds to the aged look.
Painting old pieces is a great and inexpensive way to dress up something old and make it new again. I think these pieces must have been through the flood because they were pretty musty smelling. The fresh paint took care of that too.
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