Before starting this project, I spoke with people who have painted furniture before and read half a dozen tutorials. Before beginning, I had to acknowledge the following:
- I am not a professional painter
- I have never actually painted furniture before
- The beds might not turn out well
- Lots of things could be not quite perfect
But at the end of the day, I really wanted to go through the process of creating: Having a vision for a project, doing the necessary research, and actually following through to the finished project. I chose to follow the basic ideas from this tutorial about painting furniture, resolve myself to use the thinnest coats of paint that I could, and forgive myself ahead of time if there were any drips of paint on my project. That was my biggest fear going into this. The following is a loose step-by-step of what I did.
Test the beds for lead-based paint. (5 minutes) I am great with child, and this bed will be going into my older child's room. Knowing whether or not the bed had lead paint made a big difference for my peace of mind, and would also make a difference in how I would treat the existing paint on the furniture. I was SO happy to see the bed test negative!
Sand the bed. (~2 hours) (From this point on, I'm going to talk about just one bed. Only one is done. :)) My Dad did part of this sanding. The idea was to get as smooth a surface as possible where there were rough spots or the paint had chipped, and give a general roughing up to all surfaces. Not always easy on the spindles.
Apply a coat of primer. (~2.5 hours) I was working really hard to prime as thinly as possible, practically dry brushing the entire time. I still found it difficult to keep the thin primer from dripping. This is also where I committed to which direction the brush strokes would go. To work with the tiny spindles, I used a 1 inch brush. I used Kilz oil-based primer.
Left side primed footboard, right side sanded headboard
Original here
The style was so sweet and simple. As I searched for a pair of twin beds, I did not limit my search to the woodturnings of the Jenny Lind, but I knew that they topped my list. Along the way, I saw many Jenny Lind beds painted bold, playful colors. Oh my, I liked it. Here is a bed currently available from Land of Nod: $549 for a twin, $649 for a full. (They have a couple of other colors.)
When searching a local auction site one day, I saw my beds. A pair of Jenny Linds, very old, in need of some paint, and lovely. I snagged them for $30 each.
And the other two bedrooms:
Charlie relaxing
Our house continues to move along. We have booked movers for the 21st, so that is very exciting! It will be really good to be able to settle into our home and nest a little before the new baby comes. (The 21st puts me at 37 weeks pregnant, in case any one was keeping track.)
My Dad and Stepmother have been an invaluable help at the house... thanks to them the Master Bedroom is this beautiful green color!
