What I Learned About Painting Furniture

If you read my post about blueberry pancakes, you also noticed I was painting our China Cabinet. One thing I've noticed about furniture is that it's expensive and a lot of it kind of looks like crap. I'm not a HUGE fan of China Cabinets, especially the big ones that look fancy. Bleh. Not my style. So I've decided I'm going to paint furniture pretty colors and make my house BRIGHT!!
To review -

This is where we started. 
Lesson #1 - sanding is hard. You don't necessarily need to sand the furniture, but I went ahead and did a light sanding all over. It took me forever and was my least favorite part of it. Next time, I might just try not doing it because a lot of design bloggers say they don't (I'll mention my favs in a minute) 
Lesson #2 - if you're thinking about getting rid of your hardware and buying new hardware, KEEP IT JUST IN CASE. I couldn't find any good looking hardware so I'm so glad we ended up keeping what we have. It was wwwwaaaaayyyyyy better looking than what I found in the store. You can always paint it, although I liked the antique bronze my hardware is. 

I've read that you should try the Krylon brand spray paint but I couldn't find it, so I went with this. It didn't seem to do as well and it took us about 5 blue cans to paint the whole thing. Next time, I'll try the Krylon just to see, although this was a big piece of furniture. 
Lesson #3 - priming. My husband came home and I had used an entire can of primer on just the doors. He was like, really... an entire can... on just the doors? Evidently, I was a little heavy handed. He told me that I only need a light coating as the primer was mainly to help the color stick. So note to self. 
Lesson #4 - do this in a well ventilated area. We painted it in an open garage, with a mask and it was still a lot. 
Lesson #5 - it needs to be at least 50 degrees - we were okay with this but I just wanted to make sure I put that in here. 
The finished product was awesome. I went to World Market and bought some cute pulls. 
Lesson #6 - Don't be afraid to be eclectic. You don't have to match everything! I just make sure to be in the same color family. 
These are the pulls for the top - i love them

the bottom - they are red which pulls out the red in the top pulls and in my rug 
the finished product. It still had some wet paint, so once I get it in the kitchen with the china, I will show you. 

I'm so excited to have done our first home project (well, I did the pillows and James painted this. After the primer incident, he said he was taking over). I have found that decorating our house is so fun and it doesn't have to be super expensive!!