How to Paint Furniture Black

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. In this episode, we are going through the steps of how I paint this nightstand black. I got it for $12 at the thrift store. The drawers worked fine. It's in pretty decent condition. We're just going to do a little makeover. So let's get this project started. Okay, like always, I'm going to take the drawers out here and I'm going to give this nightstand a deep clean. I'm using a shop vac. They're perfect for these types of projects. Now I'm pouring mineral spirits on top of the nightstand and then I just use a rag and clean up the entire thing. Now after cleaning, let's start sanding down the project. We don't need to go crazy just because we're painting everything. We're doing no staining. I'm using 120 grit sandpaper. The idea of sanding is just to make a better surface for the paint to stick to and it also smooths everything out so there's no uneven surfaces when you start painting. And of course, grab that mineral spirit cloth again and clean up all the dust from sanding. Now when everything's dried up, let's start painting. I'm using a pure black paint. It's bare paint from Home Depot. It's a satin finish. So just grab your brush and start painting this project. If you have any deep areas that are hard to touch, like this nightstand had around the edges here, it's nice to fill them in with a bit of paint first just so you can go back and forth the top of the nightstand. The reason I like to go back and forth with the wood grain is because if the paint dries and it's not level, your brush strokes will match the wood grain and it looks a lot better than comparing it to the other way around. It's important that you don't put too much paint on your brush or you'll get drip marks and streaks throughout the project so just be aware of that too. Make sure to put something under your project when you're painting it. If you don't, you could cause the paint that's on the floor to reconnect it to the paint on your project and it could peel back and ruin your piece. If you don't want to miss out on my future videos and future furniture projects, please hit that subscribe button. Here I'll throw on some music now just to finish up this first coat. Okay, after letting the first coat dry, I'm going to use 320 grit sandpaper just to sand everything smooth. Ideally a sanding sponge would work best but this is all I had on me. Don't sand very hard. The idea is just to sand super light just to make it a smooth layer for your next coat of paint. After sanding everything nice and smooth, let's take out that clean rag and clean off the surface so you don't have any dust in your paint for the next coat. Here's that black satin paint I was talking about earlier if you were interested. Now let's get started on that second coat. Here's what it looks like with two coats of black paint so far. Alright, so after the second coat we're actually going to do a third coat so we're going to have to repeat the steps again. We're going to sand, clean, paint and then we can do a top coat after that. So look for any uneven edges or anything like that, bubbles in the paint, just sand it down smooth so the top final coat is super smooth the way you want it to be. And don't forget to wipe it down again. That's a very important step that you don't want to forget. Alright, let's add on that third coat of paint. You could probably get away with two coats but you know I like being safe with three sometimes. So let's see what it turns out like. After finishing your top final coat of black paint you can grab a respirator for safety and we can spray on our top coat finishes. We're going to do three coats of that. It's going to be a lacquer finish and that will be durable enough. And of course we're going to clean it before we spray on that lacquer so we don't have any dust or dirt underneath. And of course the paint is dry when you do this. So let's get started on spraying this first top coat protection layer. And let's not forget about the drawers. Here's the lacquer I'm using. It's called Watco lacquer. It's a satin finish so let's get spraying. So instead of watching me do every single coat, this is the final coat I'm putting on here. After putting on our three coats of lacquer we are going to put the dresser back together. But first I like to take out this finishing wax. It's perfect for placing on the drawer slides. It makes it much easier. So let's throw some on here. I take an old rag I just cut up and put a nice bit of wax on it and just slide it right on that piece of wood in the middle there. I also take the rag and wax and I put it directly on the slider underneath the drawer. I find this helps a lot too. Here's the new hardware that I'm going to be throwing on this black nightstand. Let me know in the comments if you guys like these drawer pulls. Anyways grab your screwdriver and install them on. So here's the nightstand one more time before we painted it and here's what it looks like after. I hope you liked this makeover tutorial video and if you don't want to miss any more of my future videos please hit that subscribe button. Thanks so much for watching and see you guys next time.