Upcycled Pine Bedroom Furniture

Since the move we've been sinking our funds into the house makeover, so wherever we can save money we will do! We've always hated our pine bedroom furniture, but it was free to start with as a family member was getting rid. We have had it for over a year now, and in the new house we wanted something a bit nicer, we'd been shopping online for weeks for bedroom furniture but we're not very good at being realistic so it was all way out of our price range.

So rather than shell out we considered what we could do to turn the furniture we had into furniture we loved. The first thing that popped into our head was to turn the pine white.

To prepare the wood for painting we sanded the drawers until the shine was lost and the wood felt a little bit rough, just so the paint would stick to the furniture and not chip off if the drawers were knocked. We used white undercoat and gave all the drawers two coats, leaving 24 hours in between as the tin instructed.

On the woodwork in the bedroom we've used Eggshell white, which gives a matt finish with a slight shine... a bit like an eggshell. So we used the same on the sides of the drawers, however gloss is much easier to wipe clean and keep stain free so we glossed the tops.

For this project we used quick dry gloss to speed up that 24 hour drying time, whilst it did dry quickly, the effect was far from impressive, we ended up going over it with gloss twice but there is still no where near the same shine or coverage as with usual gloss. Looking back we wouldn't use it again, the 24 hour wait is worth it when you get the right results!

After painting the outside of the drawers we had started thinking along more adventurous lines. Originally we wanted a white and pale blue bedroom, but after finding this wallpaper, that all changed. So we wanted to still bring some blue into the room, but not too look completely out of place. We used alternate blue and a tan brown paint to paint the drawers fronts.

The paints we used are 'Quintessential Blue' and 'Ancient Artefact' from the Dulux Timeless Classics range, we used tester pots for the paint, which we already had to hand after trying out a few colours around the house. As this was standard emulsion it didn't take well to the undercoat we had already put on the drawers, it took four coats to get a good even coverage and it will probably chip off if you knocked it. However this was purely due to the fact we had undercoated first, we have used the Timeless Classics paint in our front room as well and it gave great coverage and went on really smoothly.

To break up the blocks of colour we stuck with white handles, and we're quite happy with the results. It was J's ideas to paint the legs blue, I wasn't sure at first but they have grown on me now (and I don't actually see them very often...)

We're loving our new look drawers, they should last us a few years until a full update is due.. whilst they are pretty for now, they have seen better days.

Have you ever tried upcycling? Or made the mistake of using emulsion over undercoat?

 Muchos x