I managed to find a practice piece of 70's teak furniture to have a go at upcycling. I picked up this bureau for £10 and planned to turn it into a modern crafts cupboard.
As this was a practice project I followed some youtube tutorials on painting old furniture and went with the easiest plan of action.
I bought sandpaper sponges (small square sponges with sandpaper glued to each side, regular sandpaper would work just as well) and paint brushes from the pound shop. I also ordered white and grey tester pots of regular emulsion paint from Dulux and an old fashioned typewriter wall sticker from Etsy.
I sanded down the areas I wanted to paint and then cleaned all the dust off with a damp sponge. I then painted the sides and top white, I tried to leave the trim it's natural colour. So, lessons learned from this: 2 Dulux tester pots do not provide enough paint, pound shop paint brushes are rubbish and all the bristles stick in your paint, primer would appear to be a good investment and finally why oh why did I not use masking tape on the bits I didn't want to paint.
I managed to squeeze out 2 coats of white on the sides but a third (and maybe a fourth) would be needed. If I do this again I'll definitely invest in a pot of primer.
I decided to just paint the two front cupboard doors grey and leave the drawer, trim and legs in its natural state. 2 tester pots were enough for this and as it was a dark colour on top of a dark colour no primer would have been needed and quite a good coverage was achieved.
Once the paint had dried I set about applying the wall sticker (sometimes referred to as a wall 'decal' if you decide to order one from an American website as I did). Again lack of patience and equipment over ruled here. I should really have attached the sticker in the right place with masking tape to ensure it was straight but fired in and did it by eye. Thankfully it worked out ok. I peeled the backing paper off to reveal the sticky side. I started at the top of the sticker and using a credit card smoothed out any bubbles before removing the top paper to reveal the finished article. As I had placed the sticker over two doors I had to split it in the middle, this worked out ok and the credit card split it in the join quite easily although left a bit of a raggedy edge which I've not been able to fix. You can't notice it unless you open the door.
So the following week I had to go back and repaint the sides with white paint. This time I used a tin of Satin wood paint and a mini roller. The satin wood paint was great and a bargain at £4 a tin from Asda. The mini roller was a bit of a nightmare as I didn't have much control and it kept getting white paint onto the grey and natural wood areas. Much swearing ensued. The coverage with the roller was good however and obviously left no brush marks.
Eventually I plan to varnish it over. This is why I used emulsion rather than gloss or wood paint. I also felt I could get away with tester pots and would have access to a wider range of colours.
So the total cost worked out at:
£10 - 2nd hand bureau
£1 - cheap paint brushes
£1 - sand paper
£8 - tester pots (£1 each for 2 of each colour and £1 each for delivery, available from Dulux website)
£4 - white satin paint, Asda
£1.70 - mini roller and paint tray
£11 - wall sticker, Etsy
£36.70 in total. Paint, sandpaper and roller I'll be able to use again. I'm pretty pleased with that because I know I have a one of a kind piece.
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