Upcycling Furniture Turorial

So as I mentioned in the last blog, Leah and I have taken up a hobby and side hustle of repainting old furniture to sell online. It's been a pretty lucrative endeavor so far. I thought I would share the basic steps for upcycling furniture because it is really easy and may be something you're interested in doing. So easy, in fact, that I have a "to paint" list that includes most pieces of wooden furniture in my house :) 

We have been exclusively using Annie Sloan chalk paint. I suppose you could use other types of chalk paint or even make your own but we like ASCP because a) we know where to buy it and b) it comes in some beautiful colors. 

Annie Sloan color wall at Total Bliss in Greensboro (taken with owner's permission)

Chalk paint is great because it requires no sanding or priming, adheres to most any surface, dries really quickly, and emits zero fumes. So there's my plug for chalk paint - I highly recommend it.  It may be a little difficult to find as only a few retailers in NC carry Annie Sloan brand. You can look on their website to find a list of retailers. 

The first step in the upcycling process is to find a piece of furniture that you want to transform. We find a lot of our stuff on CL. Most of it is hideous (and cheap) so you have to use some imagination in order to see the potential. For the purposes of this blog, I will show you how we took a regular straightback chair and antique coffee table and transformed them into shabby chic masterpieces. 

I start off every piece by doing a little bit of prep. This usually just entails wiping it down with a damp paper towel to get off any dirt or dust. Never skip this step! On a few occasions, you may need to lightly sand a piece, as was the case with the leather coffee table since some of the varnish was cracked and peeling. After minimal prep, start painting the first coat. I operate under the assumption that each piece will need two coats so the first coat is not going to be perfect. This is mostly about coverage. In our tag team operation, I am the designated prepper (including taping) and first coater while Leah is the designated second coater and distresser. We all have our strengths....

After the first coat, carefully apply the second coat while trying not to miss any spots. I would recommend having multiple light sources or even a second set of eyes (paint police) as it is really easy to miss spots that you swore you painted. 

That's two good looking coats of paint... We used Chateau Grey in case you were wondering. 

Now after you've done your coats of paint you can stop there and wax (which I will get to in a minute). But why would you?  Who wants a boring piece of furniture? Not meeee. This is the part of the process where you can use some sandpaper to distress the piece, lightly or heavily. To lightly distress something, concentrate on the edges, corners, or any lines that might exist. To heavily distress, choose spots all over the piece and just go at it. It's really hard to mess this up so just be creative with it and stop when you feel like you've done enough. The more random, the better. 

After distressing, you will have created a lot of chalk dust from the paint that was rubbed off. You should use a damp paper towel to wipe the piece down again to get all of that dust off before waxing. 

We use Annie Sloan waxes to finish our pieces. There are two types - a clear and a dark wax. We use the clear wax on everything as a protective coat. It cures for 24 hours and you can apply another coat of wax if you like but usually we just do one.  You should use a lint free cloth to apply the wax and rub it in like you would hand lotion (which I interpret as a circular motion but maybe you put lotion on a different way). 

After you apply the clear wax, you can stop there and sometimes it's a really good idea to do so. However, there are situations where you want to take the piece to the next level and apply the dark wax, which is essentially a staining wax. We chose to do this for these pieces and it worked really well. We also tried a dark wax on my white coffee table the other day and it was a disaster. So wax darkly with caution!!! The dark wax is applied the same way as the clear but you are wiping off the excess almost as soon as you put it on. Otherwise it will be a lot of darkness. And be warned that it will get all over your hands although it comes off with aggressive hand washing. 

Same color used (Provence) but the one on the left has the dark wax while the one on the right only has the clear wax. 

Leather table after dark wax 

So it's pretty easy to transform a boring piece of furniture into something unique and exciting! I love seeing the before and after transformations. If you want to see more, follow us on Instagram @shabby_chicks  

Happy painting!!