Bench Painting

Author:  Autumn

Hi everyone!  I hope you had a great week-end with lots of fire works, good food, outdoor activities, and great weather.

I am going to share another small change/big impact before and after with  you today.  Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about changing the tired fabric on our dining room chairs to something fresh and updated.  You can read about it here.

In that same post, I mentioned that I would be putting a bench under the table to give it the informal look I am going for, despite the fact that the table and chairs are a very formal cherry Queen Anne set.

I was working on another project when I happened to end up at Home Goods.  Well, I found this great bench there at the right price and decided to go for it.   I put the top down in my car, put the bench in the passenger’s seat, and came home with it.

The bench colors matched our new fabric, but it was missing two colors that I needed and use throughout the house – yellow and red. I almost forgot to take a before photo but remembered after I had started taping.

This is the new fabric I wanted to coordinate with.  You can see that it has blues, greens, browns, and off white, just like the bench.  But the bench was missing the yellows and reds.  Well, call me crazy, but I decided to add some stripes to the bench in those two colors. I have been known to paint wallpaper in my past, but I have never attempted to change or add colors to fabrics.  But, thanks to seeing all of the crazy things people in blogdom have done, I was up for the challenge.

I bought two bottles of fabric paint at the craft store – one in yellow and one in red.  I was concerned that the hues might be too bright, but they weren’t.

Using painter’s tape, I measured and placed the tape across the bench top and bottom.  Lucky for me, the existing stripes were all different widths.

Then I filled in the area between the tape with the yellow paint first.  It went on very smoothly and evenly and didn’t run.  The top and bottom stripes even lined up.  You can see here that the lid opens for storage.  Isn’t that cool!

I then followed the same procedure for the red, but I made those stripes much slimmer.  You can see how the tape kept the paint from smudging onto the fabric.  I followed the directions and let the paint dry for four hours.

When I removed the tape, I was thrilled with the results.  I only made one little smear, but it is thankfully in a place that won’t show up.  Here is the close-up of the fabric.

And here is a shot showing the top of the finished bench.  The addition of the two colors is subtle yet it makes the impact that I needed.  The next thing I did was spray it with a fabric protectant.  Now it blends perfectly with the new floral chair fabric.

The only advice I would give to anyone who has not painted fabric with fabric paint is to make sure your taped edges are sealed to the fabric.

I hope this inspires any of you thinking about painting some fabric to take the plunge.  Remember, if all else fails, you can always have it reupholstered.

Take care.

Linking to 

I was not compensated by Home Goods or the paint company to show their product.