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tutorial

How To Paint Laminate & MDF Furniture

October 30, 2017 6 Comments

Hello and happy almost Halloween.

In our home we do not celebrate Halloween. But we do allow the kids to go around the block and grab some candy + normally we have a few family members over and play games or watch a movie. Easy, simple and then the next day we are normally planning our Christmas decorations.

Over the last week I was lucky to be given this dresser from my aunt. It had really pretty bones, but it wasn’t real wood. I’ve painted a few laminate and MDF pieces in the past and so I thought I would write a blog and give you a few pointers when painting over this type of surface. I must admit, it isn’t as easy as painting over wood and there are a few extra steps. But if you can take an extra 3o minutes to do them, you will be left with a piece that will scream at you – in a good way 😉

The below image is screaming to be pinned as I couldn’t find a ton of info on Pinterest about painting over these two types of surfaces.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

 

Shop List

  1. Paint Brush
  2. Roller
  3. Paint any kind, but I used a all-in-one Primer/Paint from Home Depot. Behr “Snow Fall”
  4. Spray Paint for Knobs / or new knobs
  5. Wax or Varnish for protection ( this is an optional step, but a step I always do )
  6. Sand Paper
  7. Rag to whip down dresser before painting

Alright, so this is going to be a super easy step-by-step tutorial, but sometimes if you aren’t used to refinishing furniture, it’s good to take another read.

Here’s what the dresser looked like in the first place. I took out all the drawers and did a light sand over it. This step cannot be skipped. If you skip it, the paint will have a hard time adhering to the surface & could bubble. It takes off some of the gloss and will  make the actual painting process MUCH easier & faster.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

The sanding process probably took me all of 15 minutes. I sanded down all the surfaces that would touch paint. Then once I was done, I wiped the entire dresser down with an old rag, so there wouldn’t be particles of dust in the finish.

Next, you want to grab your roller. I picked a large roller because it’s what we had on hand and I wanted this whole project to cost us nothing. If you have a smaller dresser, a smaller roller would be best.

I rolled all surfaces that were flat ( which was most of the dresser )

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

As you can see, the coverage isn’t amazing with the first coat. I did a total of three coats. But the second and third coat go MUCH faster than the first. Also, if you’re not a patient person like myself, remember how much you’re saving in this process.

Second, grab your brush and paint over all the hard to reach places that your roller can’t get to. Once I’ve done this, I like to roll over flat areas again so that there is MINIMAL brush strokes in my project.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

Here’s what the dresser looked like once the first coat was completely on. Do not be alarmed, once you have the last coat on, it will start looking brand new and stunning.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

….and the third coat drying.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

It’s literally that easy. The secret is to sand your piece down prior to painting and a good roller will help too!

Now, a question of what to use for protection. I love love love my clear wax from Old Barn Milk Paint. But if I’m lazy ( and I am often ) I will use this polyurethane from Home Depot. You must only purchase this can as it is literally the only brand/type of varnish that I’ve ever used that has not slightly yellowed the surface of the white paint.

You can either roll it on ( which I prefer ) or you can paint it on. If you use a paint brush, know that if the sunlight hits your piece, you *might* see brush strokes in the surface.

Drying Times –

I left an hour between each coat of paint and Behr is an extremely fast drying paint. The varnish needs about 12 hours to “cure” before you put anything on your dresser, but it will be dry to touch in an hour.

and that’s it folks! Easy Peasy and this project cost us NOTHING. Someday we will be changing out the knobs, but we were out of spray paint and didn’t want to cough up the money for new knobs right now, so I had these cute librarian knobs in storage so I put them on.

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

How to Paint over Laminate and MDF Furniture . Super easy tips to make your painting job easy and flawless . Dresser revamp, refinished furniture , refinished furniture

 

 

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Filed Under: diy Tagged With: DIY, How To, laminate, mdf, new dresser, Paint, refinished dresser, Refinished Furniture, tutorial

DIY | Faux Metal Coffee Table

July 20, 2016 2 Comments

The last couple of weeks and months have been a whirlwind of orders, endless emails, decision making and stress. We finally decided yesterday morning that we will be closing our Rugged Rooster business indefinitely.

If you’re new to our blog, we’ve built rustic furniture from scratch for three years now. We’ve been blessed to have had amazing clients and built over 1700 pieces but there has to come a time in life when you need to say no to stress. We’ve been so incredibly blessed to stay home with our kids, even if it had us working 10 – 14 hour days with the rare day off.

One of our customers asked if we would be putting up tutorials of our pieces, so you can start to build them, and the answer is YES. So I’m here today to post a  how to build a faux metal coffee table.

Since we do not have the resources to make the drawings and edited versions I’ll be sending you over to Ana White. It’s a super easy, straight forward project. The only thing I would recommend, if you would like to do a really good sand on your table top, is leave a slight 1/2″ overhang on all sides. It also makes it way easier to paint the base & stain the top.

Build A Faux Metal Coffee Table In A Few Hours, Save hundreds of dollars and learn this easy DIY method, Little tools needed for this modern coffee table

Build A Faux Metal Coffee Table In A Few Hours, Save hundreds of dollars and learn this easy DIY method, Little tools needed for this modern coffee table

We sanded down the top, and then took a chain to beat it up, see method here. We then took Sunbleached Oak, by Minwax and applied one light coat to the top. You want to let it sink in for about 5 minutes. Wipe off in one continuous direction until no  stain comes off when you wipe. We let our pieces sit for about 3-5 hours ( depending on the humidity in the air ) and then we apply two coats of matte polyurethane.

Build A Faux Metal Coffee Table In A Few Hours, Save hundreds of dollars and learn this easy DIY method, Little tools needed for this modern coffee table

For the base we purchased a fine tip paint brush and a can of matte black paint. You can also spray paint the base as well, but you need to make sure you completely wrap the top before doing so. I love the look of the black paint as it goes on a bit thicker than spray paint so it looks like true metal.

Build A Faux Metal Coffee Table In A Few Hours, Save hundreds of dollars and learn this easy DIY method, Little tools needed for this modern coffee table

You can also plane all your boards down so that it has a more seamless look, but we wanted the top to look a bit more rustic as it has a very modern base.

Head on over to AnaWhite to check out her take on this fun Faux Metal Coffee Table. We made our version before Ana came out with hers ( replicating a Restoration Hardware coffee table ), but since it’s practically the same, you do the same steps.

Ana does an amazing job, as per usual, but she uses skinny 1×3 planks instead of the thicker 2×8 planks that we use. Keep in mind when buying wood from a store, it is always less than the marked dimension. So 2×8’s are 1.5″ x 7 1/4″. So you need to keep that in mind when you are building you base.

I hope you liked this tutorial on how to make a faux metal coffee table. If you have any additional questions, pop a question below and I would love to answer. We’ve built over 30 of these coffee tables for our clients and so we can tell you what will and wont work.

Have an absolutely fantastic week!

jessicasarasignature

Build This Easy Faux Metal Coffee Table In Under 4 hours & Under 75 Dollars, Modern Rustic Coffee Table, Easy DIY, Ana White DIY.

Filed Under: diy Tagged With: Ana White, Build, built, coffee table, DIY, faux metal coffee table, How To, tutorial, Wood, woodworker

How To Paint Velvet Upholstery

June 17, 2016 23 Comments

Back in march I picked up these vintage pink velvet chairs on craigslist. I had high hopes for them as they had such good bones. Cane chairs are my ultimate favourite style of vintage chairs  and a lot of high end designers get them reupholstered and painted. Well, I didn’t have that kind of budget because reupholstery can cost upwards of 500 a chair, or more. So I set out to google different methods of painting upholstery.

I found a lot of tutorials on painting different types of cotton, and other similar materials but couldn’t find a lot on velvet. One tutorial said to paint the chair with water first or spray the material before beginning and below I’ll explain on why that step isn’t really important.

Here are the chairs to begin with

Painting Velvet Upholstery, How to Paint Velvet

How To Paint Velvet Upholstery

I’m sorry for the awful before photo. I didn’t really plan on blogging the transformation until I decided I needed to because there wasn’t a lot of coverage on  painting velvet upholstery.

I basically started off with painting the chair seat with water. I read somewhere that this is beneficial and I highly discourage it. Not only is my seat taking WAY longer than the back of the chair to dry, but it will need additional coats as the paint sunk in too far. This might be a great method on a cotton chair as you are basically dying the chair fabric, but for velvet I found that just simply painting straight away worked better.

I’m trying  “Chalked” by Rust-Oleum in Aged Grey. We kind of have a grey thing and Glen specifically picked out this color to redo our chairs in.

How To Paint Velvet Upholstery, Painting Velvet Upholstery The Easy Way

This 887 ML Can cost me $22.00 and the color, consistency and coverage is actually pretty nice. I’ve used quite a few other chalk paints before and it fits the bill nicely. Plus the color is so dreamy.

I’ve read quite a few tutorials who stated you need to spritz or paint your material with water prior to painting it. Well, don’t. I’m so much happier with how the backing of my chair has turned out after one coat than the seat. The seat is the part of the chair I painted with water prior to starting.

Painting upholstery does take longer to dry so if you can put this in a breezy place to wait it out I would suggest that. We have ours out in a shaded area on our deck.

Here’s a shot mid first coat, as you can tell the coverage is amazing.

Painting Velvet Upholstery, How To paint Velvet Upholstery the easy way

As you can see, the seat of the chair is a lot more pink than the back of the chair. So don’t use water folks, it will just prolong this project by a few hours.

Here’s the chair with the first coat of chalk paint on – some may choose to just leave it as is. But I want it to be a bit more grey, as you can see it looks slightly purple.

Painting Velvet Upholstery, How To paint Velvet upholstery The easy way

After throwing one more coat of paint on the chairs, here’s how they turned out.

Painting Velvet Upholstery, How To Paint Velvet Upholstery The Easy Way

Painting Velvet Upholstery, Paint Velvet Upholstery The Easy Way

Painting Velvet Upholstery, Paint Velvet Upholstery The Easy Way

Would I ever paint upholstery again? Yes, but not for a good while. I only had enough time today to paint one of my chairs and it is a lot more work than painting wood.

What was the cost of this project? $ 27 dollars ( Paint + Brush )

Good luck on your next DIY!

jessicasarasignature

Filed Under: diy Tagged With: DIY, Do It Yourself, Painting, Reuse, tutorial, Upholstery, Velvet

Raised Garden Bed – The Easiest Way!

May 15, 2016 3 Comments

Ever since starting a family, six years ago, Glen has wanted to have a raised garden bed. My mother-in-law has a total green thumb and has passed it down to Glen. We have always lived in extremely new developments without a yard and in the city and up until recently never had time to make a garden. Well enough was enough. With the climbing prices of electricity, heat, food and basic life, why not grow you own veggies & fruit?

I made this super easy raised garden bed without Glens help. It’s a basic box just screws together and I’m pretty happy with the end result. So lets get started shall we?

[Read more…] about Raised Garden Bed – The Easiest Way!

Filed Under: diy Tagged With: DIY, Farm, Garden, Gardening, Organic, Pine, Planters, Plants, Raised Garden Bed, Soil, tutorial

Build An Easy Pedestal Coffee Table

April 9, 2016 5 Comments

Just jumping on the blog today for a quick sec to post the plans for this ammmmmmazzing pedestal coffee table. Since posting our completed pedestal table last night I’ve received quite a few emails & comments asking for the plans for this coffee table. Although we did make a few customizations to it , okay… a lot- we didn’t make the plans. Continue reading to grab the link! Easy Pedestal Coffee Table, Pedestal Table, Build An Easy Pedestal Table, DIY Pedestal Coffee table, DIY Table

[Read more…] about Build An Easy Pedestal Coffee Table

Filed Under: All Tagged With: anawhite, Build, coffee table, DIY, DIY coffeetable, furniture, rustic furniture, shanty2chic, tutorial, woodworker

Build A House Bunk Bed

April 3, 2016 28 Comments

I’ve been dying to share this post with you. After searching for the perfect new bunk bed for our boys bedroom, we decided to come up with our own tutorial for a house bunk bed. House Beds are a huge trend right now. I saw my first house bed over a year ago and I fell in love and I swore that as soon as we built our daughter a toddler bed someday, I would make a super cute pink house bed, decorated in cute pom pom buntings and it would be perfect. Well, fast forward a year, and she’s only 16 months, still a ways away from being in a toddler bed. Then I had a idea! We are in the process of decorating our boys bedroom. and we needed to build them a new bunk bed set as their old set was massive and took up half their room. Bunk Beds, Loft Bed, Bunkbeds, Cheap bunk beds, build a bunkbed, Easy bunk bed, House Bed, built a house bed

[Read more…] about Build A House Bunk Bed

Filed Under: diy Tagged With: Ana White, Bed Plans, Bed Tutorial, Bedroom Furniture, Build, bunk bed, Bunk Bed Tutorial, BunkBed Tutorial, Cut List, furniture, Home Depot, House Bed, House BunkBed, Milwaukee, Tools, tutorial, Wood, Woodworking

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Hi! I'm Jessica Sara Morris. Lifestyle Blogger, Interior Designer and Mama to Four. Occasionally spontaneous but mostly a hermit who lives in stretchy pants.

Hey, I'm Jess!
Lifestyle Blogger, Interior Designer and Mama to Four. Occasionally spontaneous but mostly a hermit who lives in stretchy pants.

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