Here is the tale of the ugly bench that is now the darling bench. I’ve read for many years about painting fabric to re-do furniture. I finally jumped in with both feet and finished my first of many painted fabric projects. Feast your eyeballs on what I started with… the ugly bench.
Maroon and orange… who thought up that mess? I researched many types of mediums to use and this one seemed the most economical and straight forward to mix and use.
That white bottle is Martha Stewart’s tintable fabric medium. They are $5.99 at Michael’s so use your 50% off coupon! I used two kinds of paint, just because I already had one… the Valspar “Aqua Ocean” sample and the Craft Smart cheap turquoise. The mixture is one part Martha’s medium to two parts paint. I used up two bottles of Martha’s mixture and probably have 1/4 of the paint/medium left over.
One trick I read that sure worked well was to spray the whole piece once over with water before each coat of paint. It helped the fabric absorb the paint.
I taped off the wood with masking tape. Not the best results. Next time I will use blue painter’s tape. Here are the results of one coat of paint:
After the first coat of yummy turquoise dried over night, I sanded the whole thing with sand paper. Yes, you read that right. It turned the crunchy hard fabric back into nice soft fabric. I sanded between each coat after it was thoroughly dried. It took four coats of paint to completely hide the maroon color.
Here is the half way finished bench in our entry way… the fabric is done, but I still want to paint the wooden arms and legs, but I can’t decide on a color, and people were coming over… so there is sits. My littlest one is so excited because she asked if one of those baskets could be ONLY hers for her shoes and whatnot… I said yes.
This makes me happy.
My Sister's Jar 