Painting Furniture: A Shabby Chic Coffee Table

Upcycling Furniture: A Shabby Chic Coffee Table

Painting furniture with a shabby chic look is a simple way to revamp old or thrifted pieces!

Do you have a piece of furniture at home that needs some love? Perhaps you’ve seen furniture at garage sales or thrift stores that are a little rough around the edges. Don’t be afraid to grab those “ugly” pieces! You can easily turn them into beauties!

I started out with this extremely rough-looking coffee table. It was wobbly, was missing a knob on the drawer, and the stain was practically leaping off of the surface– but, it was $5!

Upcycling Furniture: A Shabby Chic Coffee Table

What You Will Need:

1. A piece of furniture that you would like to redo

2. Paint – a zero VOC paint is a good option that’s a lot healthier for you and your home! You can get it in the house paint section at most local hardware stores. Just ask for zero VOC!

3. Paint brush

4. Sand paper and/or steel wool

5. Screwdriver

How To Do It:

1. Remove the hardware from your piece with your screwdriver. I had to remove one lonely knob on the drawer and a wheel on one of the legs.

2. Sand your piece of furniture. If your piece has lots of scratches or uneven places, you might have to sand it a little more to get it smooth. However, if it’s generally okay, you just need to rough up the surface. Like I mentioned before, the stain from my piece was flaking off, so I had to sand a little bit more to make the surface even.

3. Paint your piece! This is the fun and therapeutic part (for me, at least).

4. Once you’re done painting, you can leave your piece like that, or you can distress it. Distressing is a technique used to make a piece of furniture look old or “shabby chic.” I love, love, love, this look. Once the paint was completely dry, I simply used sand paper and steel wool to take the paint off of the edges, the grooves of the legs, and some other random spots. The point is to try to make it look like it naturally came off. Here’s a close up of my distressing:

Upcycling Furniture: A Shabby Chic Coffee Table

5. After distressing, wipe down the entire piece with a rag to get all of the paint dust off.

6. Put the hardware back on your piece. I replaced the knobs on mine because it was missing one knob.

This piece is headed to my booth, but isn’t is gorgeous? I’m so tempted to keep it! Have you ever painted an old or worn piece of furniture?

Looking for more furniture ideas? Check these out:

2 thoughts on “Painting Furniture: A Shabby Chic Coffee Table”

  1. Pingback: Feelgood Style | Sustainable fashion reporting, organic beauty tips, DIY projects + tutorials, + natural product reviews.

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