Old wood furniture often looks fashionably shabby chic, but that’s seldom the case with laminated furniture. Age does over dull the finish of laminated furniture; additionally, it frequently has escalated from the laminate and cracks and separations. Painting old laminate floors may be the best way to salvage this, and once you’ve taken care of any needed repairs, it’s a straightforward procedure. Some creative glazing turns a castoff into a conversation piece.
Preparing to Paint
You can take care of bubbling or lifting laminate using contact cement. Coat the bottom of the laminate and the substrate; wait 5 minutes for the adhesive to get tacky, and then presson. You can use the identical technique on bubbles, but you might have to make a cut along the grain using a sharp knife to have the adhesive in and flatten the bubbles. Fill voids left by lost pieces of wood with wood filler till you clean the entire cupboard using a solution of trisodium phosphate detergent to etch the finish.
Sanding and Priming
You don’t need to remove the finish before you paint over laminates, but you do need to mud to etch the end. Use a palm sander and 150-grit sandpaper, and move gently on the corners and edges where the laminate is most vulnerable. This is the opportunity to sand any object down you used. After cleaning the slice using a damp rag to remove all the sanding dust, apply a coat of high-adhesion wood tip. A shellac-based product works best, though many water-based goods have comparable bonding capability and are fine to work with.
Applying the Paint
You always attain the smoothest finish when you use spray paint, but you might also get good results using a brush or roller. This is particularly true if you use milk paint, an old-fashioned, casein-based paint merchandise using a matte finish that can present your old cupboards a wow factor by emphasizing their age. You will need at least two layers of whatever paint you use, and also you must sand the first coat using 220-grit sandpaper to knock down the grain increased by the first coat of paint. Sand gently by hand in a circular motion to remove any trace of roughness in the surface.
Sprucing Things Up
If your dresser has trim, then add visual attention by painting it a shade of the base color to accent it. When it’s a dresser or cabinet, you can even accentuate color by a judicious selection of hardware. The yellows in brass work nicely with browns and blues; however, stained strikingly accents white, white, gray and black. Antiquing the end by brushing on and wiping a thin mixture of a deeper shade of the base color is another way to highlight age. Produce dark areas around the edges so the main color appears slightly washed out.