The not-a-food-post, post. Or, my first attempt at antiquing furniture!

In the process building up to my move to Austin, I have been offloading furniture through Craigslist. It has been hard because a lot of my things have personal meanings, or are things I find to be one of a kind. But, a bit of extra cash is nice and I can’t tow a uHaul anyway! 🙂

Even still, I have a few things that will be making the southward journey with me next week. One of these things is our guest bed, which we bought a year ago and left as it was. I’ve been seeing some cool “antique” furniture in my time on craigslist these last couple weeks, and I knew the current bed wouldn’t work well in my new bedroom, so I decided to try it myself! This is so unbelievably easy. Here’s what you need to do.

Ingredients

Wooden furniture
Paint (I used Behr Premium Plus, Paint & Primer in one-got two samples of the color I liked which was perfect for the bed)
Sand paper of grade 60-200 (variety pack!)
Drop cloth
Towel or small broom to dust off finished piece (you will get paint dust all over when sanding!)
Clothes you aren’t worried about getting paint or dust on.
Waylon Jennings records to listen to while working.

Sandpaper choice

Paint

Directions:

Set up your work area (I recommend that you do it outside).
Wipe dust off furniture to ensure paint sticks well.
Give it a couple of good coats and let dry thoroughly.
Using grade 60-100 sandpaper, roughly rub all the edges to reveal the wood beneath.
Go crazy and sand all over the piece, literally you can do whatever you want. Try out the different grades to see the effects. You could even give it some dents with a hammer, I heard about hitting it with a metal chain (seems a bit much)…anything goes!
When you like what you’ve done, run the finer grade (like 200) all over it to smooth it out. Then wipe off the dust, and voila!