My husband and I purchased our master bedroom furniture from Rooms 2 Go several years back. We always loved that you could get a whole room’s worth of new furniture and be able to pay it off, interest free, over several years. đź’Ż
Our furniture has held up really well… but after ~ 10 years, I really wanted to update it. The furniture was really dark and dated, and I wanted to paint it a lighter shade (and change up the drawer pulls!).
The only problem I had was that this isn’t solid wood furniture I was dealing with. It’s called veneer, which is a thin piece of wood that is attached to the outside of the furniture (which may or may not be made of other wood). The thin piece of veneer, in our case, had a smoother and shinier finish to it.
I did a lot of research on the best way to paint veneer furniture. To be honest, when I paint furniture, I typically do it the easy way: little prep and chalk paint! This time, though, I tried something with more prep… and the extra time was definitely worth it! I focused on our king headboard/footboard and our two night stands.
Here is what I did:
-Clean, clean, clean! I mainly needed to dust, so I took a rag and some furniture polish. You may need to use some actual cleaning products on yours if it needs it.
-Next… prime. The importance of using primer is to give the paint something to stick to. It covers the original color better and makes the paint quality much better on the piece. Some people recommend sanding the piece of furniture before priming to give it something extra to stick to, but I just primed.
-Let the primer dry for about an hour. Do a second coat if needed.
-Get your paint- this is up to you what kind of look you’re going for. If you want a chalkier finish, there are so many kinds of chalk paints out there! I went simple. I used interior wall paint!
-Paint! You can use a small roller brush, or you can hand brush (which I preferred in this case, since our furniture had a lot of indentions).
-I painted two coats of paint on top of the primer. Once it dried completely, I used polyurethane on the tops of the night stands to help protect them from wear and tear. I didn’t use it on the headboard & footboard.
I switched out the knobs (I actually re-used the knobs from our original kitchen cabinets).
What a difference!!!! It has lightened and brightened our room tremendously! Now, to find the time and energy to paint our other three pieces of furniture… taller and wider dressers… maybe one day!
Some before and afters…
It's Hammer Time 