How to Refinish Wood Furniture – desk, dresser, vanity
My grandma gave me a wood vanity with a large mirror that had been in storage for a long time. It needed to be stained or repainted to use. Since we had no furniture for our nautical room yet, this was a perfect addition. For nautical room ideas, see this blog post.
MATERIALS
- Second-hand wood vanity
- Paint: in this case, the color is Behr’s Midnight Blue and came as a duo primer and paint with a matte finish
- 2 inch paint brush
- Paint cloth (aka old sheet or plastic sheeting)
- Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane Aerosol, Semi-Gloss Finish
- Ryobi 5-Inch Random Orbit Sander
- Rust-Oleum White Spray Paint
- 120 grit sand paper
- DURA-GRIP® Furniture Floor Pads
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Move furniture to a well-ventilated area that you don’t mind getting paint on.
2) Remove the handles and the mirror. I spray painted my handles in a box lined with paper towels.
3) Use sander and sand paper to rough up the surface a little bit. I tried remove the thin top layer of stain.
4) Remove the drawers! I actually made this mistake and paint them shut. Whoops. That was a pain to get them out.
5) Paint! We chose the same blue as our accent wall so it matched perfectly! Let dry and paint a second coat. You may need a third coat.
6) To paint the mirror, I covered the glass with paper towels and painters tape.
7) Finish with a clear coat of polyurethane. I used spray paint for a softer finish without extra brush strokes.
8) Reattach new handles for a finished, modern look.
9) Remove any paint that got on the mirror with paint thinner, elbow grease, and maybe a razor. Just be careful to not scratch the mirror.
10) Have someone help you haul your DIY wood furniture back in to your room and assemble all the pieces!
11) We added DURA-GRIP® Furniture Floor Pads to the back of the mirror so it wouldn’t scratch our newly painted wall. We also placed 8 furniture pads on the bottom of the vanity to prevent it from scratching our wood floor.
12) Make your St. Bernard dog pose by your beautiful new piece of furniture. 🙂
How to refinish wood furniture. DIY and paint!
How to refinish a wood vanity, desk, or dresser.
I’m not sure I’d have painted a wood dresser, but I like the result – black and white theme is very nice!
Thanks Vinny! Some people are very against painting wood, but I think you should just do what you want. 🙂 It is navy blue and white for our nautical room.