How to Repaint a Console Table

Every now and then you need to take a little time to go around your house and decide what furniture pieces you have need a little more love and which ones may be closing in on the end of their life in your home. For some pieces of furniture, like console tables, they get a lot of use and touch time and may need a little sprucing up to remain in good standing in your home.

If you have a console table that has been used a lot over the years, it is probably showing it. All that use and those hands and things sliding across the surface has lead to chips and dings in the finish that make it just look not very attractive anymore. But, what if the table itself seems to be doing all right? It's just not pretty. Maybe it's time to repaint it and give it a new life. Repainting a console table is not nearly as difficult as you may think.

Let's start with getting rid of the old. You need to remove any paint or finish that is already on the table. The easiest way to do this is to head to your local home improvement store and look for some paint remover. Quite often, you can find a paint remover that you can literally pour on the surface of the console table and watch the old paint lift up and be easy to wipe away. If there are some stubborn spots you may have to do a little scraping to get those last pieces off.

This is one of those jobs you want to take your time with, as you want to make sure you get all of the pieces of paint removed.

Once you have accomplished this it's time to repaint.

Start by deciding what color of paint you want your table to be. Now it's time for a primer coat. Put on the first coat of paint and then make sure to allow the paint an adequate amount of time to dry. One of the largest mistakes people make is trying to put on too many coats of paint very quickly. Instead, step away from the console table once you have put on that first coat of paint. If you can, leave the table for least 24 hours to make sure it's completely dry before applying a second coat.

Depending on the color of paint you have selected, the color of the wood, and the final color you want to see you are going to keep putting one coat at a time until it has become the color you wanted it to be.

Once you have the paint looking right you are not quite done yet. Keep in mind, while you do have coats of paint on the console table there is still wood underneath. Wood needs to be protected from things like heat, cold and liquid. Therefore, you may want to put a sealer coat over the paint to give your wood extra protection.