Mantel/Cabinet Update

One of the easiest ways to update my house is with paint. I've mentioned that the house is entirely white, not a single ounce of colour. Along with the rest of the white is this ugly yellow wood. It can be found in several places.

These places include my fireplace, my cabinet thing at the top of the stairs, and in the kitchen. The kitchen is for another post. The mantel and the cabinet are my top concerns. By painting these I brought my living room from the 1960's straight into the twenty-first century! Whoot.

Found a picture of the colour! That's the finished mantel under the paint can,
And that's the paint I used!

I used General Paint's top soil. I found a colour swatch on the internet but it doesn't do the colour justice. Truly the colour is like an expresso black. This colour was chosen because black is what most of my furniture is. Our TV stand, our book case, our chest, etcetra.

The key thing to painting furniture is to SAND SAND SAND!

Srsly. No really. If you don't sand, it'll peel. And then you'll have to do it over again. Which will SUCK! So sand. I used these handy dandy sanding blocks on the mantel. It was super easy.

I found on my mantel some of the areas that I didn't sand well enough started to peel and chip and I've since had to address that. Since working on the cabinets, I've decided that it's really important to prime. If I was to do this project again, I would take the time to prime, and I would recommend to anyone to prime. I have started working on the hand rail and I primed that after giving it a sand with the rotary sander.

Look at that gloss disappear!

The problem with the paint I choose was that it was a clear paint and required a few too many coats. Which meant that I needed on average 4-5 coats of paint to get the true colour I needed.

Two coats in. 

3 coats in. 

My process was:

1. Sand.
2. Paint
3. Paint
4. Sand
5. Paint
6. Sand
7. Paint

I know, it's a lot of sanding, but it's worth it. 

I don't have final pictures of this project either! I will get those to you ASAP! 

Anyways, I've decided that this isn't finished. The top isn't wearing as nicely as I wanted it to. So last weekend I picked up some gloss at General Paint, and I'm going to put a glossy top coat on it. I needed it for the hand rail, so might as well spread the love! One day when I get it all cleaned up and I have a moment, but I've got my kitchen in disarray right now!