Furniture Refinishing – Don’t Throw That Bookcase Away, Paint It!!

Have you ever wished you could take your old furniture and make it tie with a new piece you’ve purchased? Then the painful reality hits, all my existing furniture looks like it’s from the 70’s!! How am I going to afford to throw all my furniture away and start over! 

Don’t worry you’re in luck. Why might you ask? Because old furniture was built with quality in mind. As refinishers, we can’t do much with a lot of the furniture built today. It’s often built from anything but wood, which makes it impossible to refinish or modify. However, we can take a quality, dated-piece and make it match any vision.

Recently, we received an email from a customer who was redecorating her home. She had three bookcases that she purchased about 40 years ago. They were in great shape, but definitely needed a makeover. She inquired if we could paint the bookcases to match her entertainment center.

The base color of the entertainment center was a shade of white but it had streaks of grey and brown running through it. This paint job was obviously done in a factory and would require us to replicate by hand. In order to match the entertainment center, the customer gave us a drawer to use as a color reference (see drawer sample with knob vs. cabinet below.)

The first step of the process is thoroughly sanding the bookcases. Sanding creates grooves, which allow the paint to adhere. Next, we spend time finding an exact color match to the sample drawer. Once a color has been chosen and the pieces are properly taped off, coats of sealer and paint are applied.

If the customer was simply looking for just a solid paint color, the painting process would be completed. In this case, we had to perform additional steps to match the grey and brown in the entertainment center. We call this process glazing. Glazing is done by hand and gives the piece its multi-color look (see drawer sample corner vs. bookcase below.)

The bookcases matched the drawer from the entertainment center exactly. The customer remarked that they looked like they came off the factory floor. She stated that buying new bookcases would have cost 4 times as much as what we charged. We were thrilled to save her the money and give her the custom look she was seeking.