Painting Wood End Tables | Wooden Dowel Furniture

These end tables were $15 each at our thrift store but we're gonna make them over. First I cleaned them off with crud cutter because you never know where thrifted furniture has been. Then I had to fix all of the chipped wood. These thin pieces of wood were chipped off in a couple of places so I filled those in and I filled in the shallow damage on the top. I just used regular wood filler for these since all of the repairs were very minimal. When I filled in these two bigger areas I found out that the wood was loose so I put some wood glue into the crack and then I taped the wood down with some painter's tape while the glue dried. Since the sides of the tables all had wood slats I thought that I would just add more to create a more trendy look. So I bought some 1 1⁄4 inch square dowels, cut them to size, and played around with the spacing and the amount of dowels. I ended up going with four dowels in each slot and just kind of eyeballed the spacing. At first I used my pin nailer to attach them but after the first side it was giving me fits. I ran out of nails and then it just kept getting jammed. So I just ended up gluing the dowels and putting tape over them to hold them into place while the glue dried. Gluing and then taping took a little bit longer than just doing the pin nailer except I didn't have to keep messing with it. So it was probably faster in the end. At least that's what I'm telling myself. The next day I removed all of the tape. I was so worried that the tape didn't hold the dowels in place but they were all glued on really well. One or two shifted or maybe that was just my bad placement but I'm honestly just choosing to ignore that. It can be on the back of the tables but I do wonder would that bother you if they were a little bit off? I couldn't ignore the wood repair though that wasn't fully glued down. I had only glued from the bottom before so I missed gluing from the top. So I filled those again, taped them in place and waited 30 minutes. While I waited for the glue to dry I sanded the dry wood filler down flush with the surface with 220 grit sandpaper. The wood filler on the top of the table didn't feel like it was all the way filled in so I filled those spots in again. Since wood filler shrinks when it dries I really was not surprised at all that I needed to fill it in again. After the glue had dried for 30 minutes I removed the tape, sanded the wood filler and filled those spots again. And then I waited for all of that to dry again before I sanded it down flush again. And then I continued that sanding all over the tables to roughen up the surface so the paint would stick better. Before I moved on to the next step I cleaned up all of the dust with a brush and a tack cloth. Then we took the tables outside and sprayed a coat of bin shellac based primer all over them. These two little tables took a whole entire can of primer. Here's a close-up of what it looked like when it was drying. There were a couple of spots where I sprayed too much in one area and overall it just looked really spotty. After an hour the primer was completely dry but one of the most annoying things about spraying this primer is that it dries with a really rough texture. So I sanded it all with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a sanding block. The sanding made it feel nice and smooth but I was also easily able to sand out the spots where it puddled because I sprayed too much primer. I used heirloom traditions paint in the color spruce. I really wanted to paint these black but I thought that wood details would be lost so I went for this shade of blue instead. I poured it into a filter and into my Wagner paint sprayer so nothing in the paint would clog my sprayer and then I added a couple of ounces of water to thin the paint out so the sprayed paint would look so much better. I tested out the spray on a piece of cardboard to make sure everything was right and then I sprayed the paint onto the tables. I let the paint dry for a little over an hour and they were nice and dry and they looked so good and better yet they felt really smooth too. Just to be sure that the tops were going to feel nice and smooth though when they were all done I sanded them lightly just to remove the texture that was there. I cleaned off the dust and then I sprayed another coat of paint. Real quick if you like this video please hit the like and subscribe buttons. So here's what they look like before and here's what they look like now. Super cute huh? A little trendy but not overly trendy right? What do you think of this color? It's a little bold but it's muted so it's not too much in your face. Let me know what you think in the comments and I'll catch you next time. Want to turn your hobby into cash? Click the link in my comments to download the free pricing guide that we use to buy and sell furniture.