Paint Old Furniture Bleak to Chic...With a Marker!

This end table before I got my crafty little hands on it defied shabby-chic. It wasn't chic at all actually...so much so that it was in storage. My mother, being the original do-it-yourselfer, had gotten her hands on it years ago and attempted to stain it. So, before my revamp, it was a dark wood, some areas shiny from the stain and some areas scratched and chipped from time and ALL UG-LY. The picture of the brown, wooden table is not my before photo because I don't have a before photo of my table. However, and you just have to trust me, the wood table pictured is pretty close to the look of mine in it's previous state...except mine was WAY...MORE...UG-LY-ERRRR!

I went with the buttery yellow color and red accent because these are the colors of a wall in my living room. The paint was left over...you get the notion. So I just started going to town. There's not much how-to for painting. Paint, dry, and if you can still see the old color underneath, repeat. I've heard of sanding and priming and such, but man, this has just always seemed like an awful lot of manual labor when my short-cut looks amazing (say so myself?).

The cliff-hanger in this little furniture makeover story is the red trimming...achieved by lining the natural curves of the table with...a marker! Or more specifically, a paint pen. No muss, no fuss...and as permanent as paint. So if I've inspired you to take a crusty table or chair and make it into a conversation piece, don't reinvent my wheel here. If you want to line the trim of something as I did, grab a paint pen. No matter how small a brush you find, no one's hand is THAT steady.

(Click paint pens image below to purchase.)

Happy creating and please leave feedback.