Painting Vintage Furniture

When to Paint Vintage Furniture

We aren’t new to the painted furniture business. We have been painting furniture for resale since 1999. We love vintage. We love peeley paint and worn finishes but we are also lovers of original patina, gorgeous woodtones and good bones in furniture. We will buy something that we love the patina on and hope someone else does too [enough to buy it anyway].

But when everyone loves it and no-one buys it, it’s time for a little change. Such was the case with this commode. We bought it because we loved the original red paint [maybe even milk paint] but after 3 months and even several “No don’t paint that original finish!” remarks, I painted it!

The inside was pretty dirty so I cleaned the inside and outside really well and painted the inside with a semi-gloss oops paint to seal and protect and go over the stains and bad painting jobs from the past, but the outside I painted with our Miss Mustard Seed Milk paint in Mustard Seed Yellow.

I knew I wanted quite a bit of the original finish to show through so after cleaning I used our Hemp Oil to create the resist for the paint. When you put hemp oil on a piece and then paint over it the paint doesn’t stick to well where you put the oil and easily sands off when dry.

Once it was sanded to my liking I put Miss Mustard Seed Antique Wax over the whole thing and now I wait and see if someone else will fall in love! I guarantee it won’t be three months!

Do you have the same problem when you are going to paint something that everyone thinks you shouldn’t but they all love it when it is done? The original color comes through while the Mustard Seed Yellow just makes it pop! Kinda neat to do a hemp oil resist over a 100+ years piece with its original finish!

Here she is in the Front Window

This is the business we are in, painted vintage furniture, so out comes the paint brush and soon a whole new piece emerges, and I have never once had anyone say they liked it better before! Here is the other shop window with a bit of Valentine Decor!

Happy Valentine’s week! We’re getting a ton of snow right now so it looks like I get to paint some more!