As part of the Country Chic Paint blog squad I received paint for this post.
Have you ever been scared to paint laminate furniture? Have you read posts about how difficult it can be? I decided to try out a pretty easy way with these two nightstands, since I knew I’d be ok if they didn’t turn out. Guess what, they’ve been great! I’ll share my tips with you here.
These nighstands have been with us since we got married 14 years ago. They’ve been in our bedroom in all 6 places we’ve lived. At 14 years old now, I decided it was time to freshen them up.
I did some prep work on these nightstands and I think it made all the difference in how they turned out. Using a sanding block, I lightly sanded all the laminate surfaces. On the top, I sanded a bit more vigorously because there were a couple of water rings and other things that I wanted to really smooth out.
I also used some spackle (like what you’d use to patch holes in the wall) to fill in some little divots on the edges of the nightstand. This helped get rid of any leftover particle board look. You can see in this picture I actually painted one coat of the blue paint first, and then realized that all those little holes would show up.
After removing the sanding dust, I painted 2 coats of Country Chic Paint / Sea Storm all-in-one paint. One of the things that helped the paint cover the laminate well is that I let the first coat dry for a day before applying the second coat. At first I tried sooner, and it was starting to pull off the first coat of paint. But letting it dry longer kept that from happening. After the second coat had dried a full 24 hours I applied natural wax a buffed it to a beautiful finish.
I used the original drawer pulls as the silver looked really great with the dark blue. For a little something extra, I cut a piece of Walls Need Love adhesive wallpaper to line the inside of the drawers.
I couldn’t be happier with our new nightstands and how they look in our room! What do you think of the result?
If you want to watch some of the process, I did a Facebook live video while I was working on one of them
Want to see my other Country Chic Paint projects? Click on the pictures below!
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| Pink Painted Sewing Table |
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| Farmhouse Clock Makeover |
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| Green and Blue Painted Chair |
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| Teal Painted Dresser |
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| TV Tray Table with Map Transfer
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Great job you did on the nightstand! Love the color also. It's coincidental, that I have also recently refinished a laminate one very similar to this one, for my great-nephew. Even the pull is silver. I agree that time for paint to dry is a key factor. Sanding and time. Did you use a primer, or did the paint have that in it?