Girl Chat: Painting Furniture ~ Best Paint to Use

 Today, I am linking up with Girl Chat this month and talking about my recent experience painting furniture.

I read many blogs about painting furniture, but haven't done too much myself.  I did paint bathroom cabinets and a mirror frame, but those are the biggest projects I have done so far....until last week. 

Bathroom cabinets 

Brook's mirror

 A year and a half ago, we bought a dresser from a re-sale store for Brook.  She has been asking me since then to paint her dresser.  While she was out of town last week, I painted every morning before work to get it finished.

I read and made lists of what I needed to do this and wrote out all the steps.  I did my research, went into Lowe's, and bought a completely different product!

These are before pictures.   

There were definitely some scratches on the dresser, but they were all on one side.

I was prepared to prime and sand between each coat, expecting to paint 2-3 coats, and then finish with a topcoat for protection. I saw this Valspar furniture paint and was quickly convinced to forego my original list of supplies.

The can says it requires no priming, sanding or top coat and it was right! I did use some wood filler on the rough spots in the photos above and sanded it with a fine sandpaper.  Then I began painting. 

This is such a heavy piece of furniture, so I decided it would be too hard to move downstairs.  I put plastic underneath the dresser and painted it in the bedroom. I did move the drawers to another room and painted them there.  It took 3 coats and I let it dry 24 hours between coats. It saved so much time not having to sand between each coat.

This is the finished product!  Once it was finished, my husband installed the new hardware on the drawers.  I let it sit for 2 1/2 days before anything was put on top of it. 

We were all pleased and Brook is so glad to finally have her dresser painted.  Now I am going to use the rest of the paint on a desk in our guest room.  I will keep you posted on how that goes!