So we’re clear, I don’t talk about Young House Love every day.

Okay, I totally do. I love their blog, I love their book, I love them. I love everything they do. I met them while they were out on their book tour and they were super nice.

John and Sherry both signed my book and Sherry signed my ceramic Target fox. I’m so cool. #iftodaycoolmeanscrazynerdy

All this is to say that I have marked off like 30 of the projects in their book: Young House Love: 243 Ways to Paint, Craft, Update & Show Your Home Some Love. I have only done one so far, which was to line my dresser drawers with wrapping paper. It went well (thanks to their good instructions) and it’s my most viewed post ever.

This time I decided to try project #214, which is instructions for painting furniture. I’m not anti-painted furniture, though with all the wood in my house, you might think that I am. I like painted furniture. It just has to be the right paint and the right furniture. So when I saw this at the Goodwill in Fairfax, I knew it would be a prime painting candidate.

It’s not a great piece of furniture. In fact, it’s a little rickety. There’s nothing that needs tightening or fixing though. It’s just not well designed and made of fairly cheap materials. As a result, in my mind, this was totally paintable.

At first, I thought I might spray paint it, which is why I brought it outside. However, even though it’s not a lot of surface area to cover, that bottom compartment involves a tambour door and I was having a terrible time getting enough coverage with the primer in between the slats without getting so much on the slats themselves that it got all drippy. And when I decided that I wanted it to be a light aqua with the “bamboo” parts painted gold, that sealed the deal. No aqua spray paint, so it was time to bring it inside and break out the brushes.

I’m not going to detail here how to go about doing the painting. There’s a great tutorial on page 278 of the Young House Love book.

But to give you a basic idea of what was involved, first I used a tiny bit of wood filler to fill a couple of dents in the piece. Then I applied one thin coat of stain blocking primer (Zinsser, which is typically what John & Sherry recommend). Then I taped off first around the bamboo in order to get the verticals painted gold (I used three coats of Martha Stewart Living Specialty Finish Paint from Home Depot in Golden Pearl). Finally, I taped around the bamboo so I could paint the shelves Robin’s Nest by Benjamin Moore, which I had left over from another project.

So all in all the project budget was pretty slim:

Ugly thrift store furniture:  $23.63
Wood filler left over from another project:  free
Primer left over from another project:  free
Martha Stewart Specialty Finish Paint:  $8.98
Benjamin Moore Paint:  free

TOTAL:  $32.61

Have you been painting anything recently? Did you find something cheap that you knew would be perfect for a project?

Linking up to:

Give Me The Goods Monday

A Stroll Thru Life Inspire Me Tuesday