Painting furniture can give it an entirely fresh look. Even better, you can often find used wood furniture for very little money - or even free! - at garage sales and other events. This is the perfect way to add some new furniture to your home for a very small budget.
First track down the furniture you want to paint. Scour CraigsList, the local advertisements, go to garage sales. Ignore completely whatever color the items are right now. That doesn't matter at all. You can change that!Once you have an item or two, head to your local hardware store with a photo or two of it. They can help you determine if the furniture has any coat on it to begin with, and what kind of primer you're going to need. The primer is what the paint "sticks to". Then you'll want to get a paint that works well with that primer. You can get one color or many. You could paint the entire chair blue, or you could paint each leg a different color of the rainbow. It's completely up to you!
Don't forget stencils! You could always paint the main dresser white and then do blue stencils down the front of it. You could make a purple set of shelves with little pink hearts.
Set up an area with a drop cloth beneath it, and then start with some sanding. You want to make sure the wood object is as smooth as possible before you begin. The sanding also gives the primer some grooves to "grab on to". Once the sanding is complete, then do the priming as instructed by the priming can. It should let you know how many coats are needed and how long to wait before you go on to the main painting.
Have fun with the painting! Enjoy yourself. Remember, you can always repaint it if something doesn't look right. That's the beauty of painting!
Finally when the paint job is done, do a sealing on it to keep it safe from harm. And then you're set! Enjoy!
