How to Paint Furniture Black | Laminate & Wood 🤩 Smooth Finish & Beginner Friendly!

today we're going back to the basics on how to paint furniture black for beginners no paint sprayer this is all by hand i'm including how to know if you need a sand or not and sharing some different options of paint and tools to make your project easier so let's dive in this is the piece i'm painting black today knowing what kind of material you're working with is always the first step in painting furniture if you're painting laminate the plastic really slick stuff then you'll need to do some extra things before you paint or else the paint will just scratch right off when we look closely at the top of this dresser and feel it it feels extra slick and kind of like plastic and instead of a natural wood grain there is no texture to it that's laminate the rest of it seems to be wood it has a natural wood grain texture it's not slick and shiny and it doesn't feel like plastic i don't want to make this video too too long so i didn't want to get into too much detail about it here let me know in the comments if you want me to do a separate video on how to tell what your furniture is made of if you can't tell what your furniture is made of though i have a couple of tricks that you can do to make sure your paint sticks but first the next step is to remove the hardware and then i clean the surface really well no matter what your furniture is made of it all needs to be cleaned really well with a degreasing cleaner we need to remove all the oils wax grime and dust from the surface or else our paint won't really stick to the furniture i like crud cutter but you can use dish soap in warm soapy water or tsp all right now for a little trick paint a sample of your paint onto a few different parts of your furniture then let it dry for 24 hours i actually did a sample without scuff sanding beforehand and a sample with sanding before painting and then i scratched at them after two hours just for funsies both samples on the wood stuck really really good the scuff sanded one did better than the not scuff sanded one but for only drying for two hours each they both did really well the samples on the laminate top though both scratched so easily the scuff sanded one scratched a little bit less easily than the not scuff sanded sample so i waited for the 24 hour mark both laminate samples still scratched though not as easily as before but the samples on the wood held on for dear life so after this little test i knew that i probably didn't need to do anything else with the bottom of the dresser but i knew that even scuff sanding the laminate top wouldn't be enough to make the paint stick so i sanded the samples off of the top scuff sanded the laminate with 220 grit sandpaper to help the primer stick to the laminate and then i primed the laminate this time i tried out this aqua lock primer in black i've heard that it has great adhesion to even really slick surfaces and that it self levels really well i love when paint self levels i also love that this primer comes in black so i don't have to paint on as many coats of black paint over it it was a little bit more expensive than some primers and i had to get a gallon of it online so if you're only painting a single piece of furniture i don't know that this primer is for you instead i personally would use plain old clear shellac last year i tested the clear shellac on laminate compared to some other primers and it made the paint stick really well to the laminate without any scuff sanding it comes in a spray can or a brushable version of course there are other primers for laminate 2 and i'll talk more about those options in my blog post since this primer is new to me i did a scratch test on it just to make sure that it was really sticking to the laminate before i wasted my time painting it passed look how much better that primer stuck to the laminate than the paint did i did end up scuff sanding the bottom of the dresser too just to show you what scuff sanding wood by hand can look like you would want to scuff sand if your paint sample on wood doesn't pass the scratch test we don't need to remove the old finish and get it down to raw wood we just need to scuff it up a little bit so the paint has something to hold onto think of how hard it is to hold on to something that's really slick in your hands like a brand new phone without a case but if that phone has a case that isn't as slick and maybe has some texture on it it's so much easier to hang on to the same thing is true with paint and wood paint has a hard time holding on to a slick surface but if we scuff it up and remove the shine a little bit then the paint has a much easier time of holding on on the grooves and details i put the folded edge of the sandpaper into the groove and rub it back and forth the goal is just to scuff up the entire surface and then be sure to remove the dust before you paint now that i know that my paint will stick it's time to paint i used my favorite brushable black paint general finishes milk paint in the color lamp black it's water-based so it doesn't have harsh fumes and cleanup is easy with soap and water and it self levels very very well it's one of the very best self leveling paints out there in my opinion i brushed it on with my round paint brush from zebra you can use a cheaper paintbrush but zebra brushes are usually around 10 and are great quality in general the cheaper quality the more brush marks you'll have in your paint the better quality paint brush the less amount of brush marks you'll get the consistency of this paint is thinner than i'm used to with their paint i don't know what happened so the coverage wasn't as good as normal on one side and the top i use the sherwin-williams mohair roller so you can see what kind of texture was left behind if you roll it on i personally don't care to roll paint on when i'm painting furniture especially if there are curves and grooves in it rollers just can't get into all those details as well as a paintbrush so i end up using both a brush and a roller and i feel like personally i just have more control over a brush than a roller i'm curious though what do you prefer a brush or a roller or a sprayer let me know the good news is though that you can paint however you want to this paint is definitely not the only black paint out there i'll link some of the other best black paints in my blog post for you here's what the paint looked like after the first coat had dried for a couple of hours i painted the second coat on the same as the first but there were some areas that didn't have full coverage still so i ended up painting a third coat on after that third coat was dry here is what it looked like there are some brush marks but for the most part they leveled out and blended in with the wood grain the biggest problem though and this was just user error but there were a lot of specks of dried paint on the top so between the thicker brush marks and the specks of paint from the roller i decided to sand the top to get rid of those once the texture was all gone i painted another coat on the top and here's what the brushed on paint looked like after it was mostly dry almost perfection technically with this paint you could stop right here they say that on no traffic surfaces you don't need to top coat this paint the low luster finish of this paint is gorgeous but i personally want my furniture to be more durable enough to withstand kids and normal wear and tear so after the paint dried for a couple of hours i top coated it if you don't want a top coat by hand you can get an absolutely amazing finish with oil-based spray on polyurethane you could also use oil-based wipe-on polyurethane too over black paint oil-based poly looks amazing but for those who can't spray or don't want to i went ahead and applied the top coat by hand so you can see how to do it one of the best tricks to top coating dark paint with water-based polyurethane is to mix some of the paint into the polyurethane then i like to use a foam sponge to apply it there are more expensive foam sponges from a bunch of different paint companies but you can also use a cheap tile grout sponge someone suggested to put a nylon stocking or pantyhose over the sponge so i'm trying it out today and spoiler alert i think i'm going to keep doing it like this anyway i get a little bit of the tinted poly onto the sponge but not too much then i wipe it on just like the paint i try to wipe it on in the direction of the wood grain and i try not to go back over it more than a time or two i like to wipe it on the edges then wipe down the middle trying not to leave a bunch behind on the edges for the drawers it works best for me when i wipe it on the edges first with a sponge that doesn't have much poly on it i didn't want too much poly in all of those grooves and then i put more poly on the sponge and wiped it across the drawers going off each side for the top i worked from side to side in long long strokes then i let it dry for a couple of hours while it dried i wrapped my plastic glove around the foam to keep it from drying out while i waited for the first coat to dry and here's what the first coat looked like after it was dry then i wiped on another coat of poly all over and after that second coat of poly was dry i debated putting new gold knobs on or putting the old hardware back on which one would you choose before i share what it looks like now please take a second to hit the like and subscribe buttons it really helps get our videos out to more people so thank you so much and thank you for all the kind comments and love you guys are the best all right here's what it looked like before and here's what it looks like now a freshly black painted dresser with a durable paint job that's going to last what do you think you

Channel: A Ray of Sunlight

Views: 204,192

Keywords: paint furniture black, paint furniture black without sanding, best way to paint furniture black, best black paint for wood furniture, furniture makeover, how to paint furniture, painting furniture, painted furniture, how to paint laminate, how to paint furniture black, a ray of sunlight, furniture flipping teacher, pretty distressed, black sheep house, painting furniture for beginners, general finishes milk paint, chalk painting furniture, black paint, furniture makeover diy

Id: s1leflM541g

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022