what kind of paint to paint wood furniture

What Kind of Paint To Paint Wood Furniture – The Best Guide

Do you want to know what kind of paint to paint wood furniture is the best? With the terms paint the wood, we refer to a vast “world” that draws from various techniques and materials.

The raw wood lacks all the finishing phase that serves as embellishment, and also protection. The means we have depending on the type of wood, and constructive and aesthetic needs are:

  • Wood varnishing (which implies knowledge of wood varnishes, wood colors, and wood enamel)
  • Wood staining (evaluating a specific wood stain)
  • Woodworking
  • Enameling
  • Wood bleaching (using specific impregnating gel)

The world of colored wood is really wide. Are you ready to start your journey and learn how to paint wood? Read on!

What Kind of Paint To Paint Wood Furniture

If you are dealing with good wood, beautiful in appearance and color, gloss wood varnish or semi-gloss wood varnish, such as flatting for wood or polyurethane varnish, are a must.  To varnish the wood in order to obtain a good result, carefully clean the surface with a linen cloth that does not leave lint.

Once you remove the dust, you should pass the turapori or cementite for wood on the surface, and wait for it to dry perfectly. Then we spread the paint with a brush, trying to give uniform passes. Once the first coat of wood paint dries, we give a good fine-grained sanding.

It is a simple, economical method, which always lets the wood grain shine through, but isolates and protects it. Then, we then proceed with a second coat of paint. If the wood is already beautifully colored, it is possible to polish it with wax, instead of varnishing it. Keep in mind that it only needs a little attention.

How to Paint Wood

You should seal the cracks and knots with putty. You must also degrease the surface of the furniture with water and ammonia.

To repair small splinters, use molding pastes. You can use a spatula and connect perfectly with the adjacent parts.

Then, apply a leveling primer, and sand to smooth the surface, before you apply the wood enamel with a flat brush in several successive coats.

Transparent and Colored Paint

You must precede clear varnish for wood by a careful smoothing of the surface and the application of a coat of impregnation turapori. Further, follow the first coat of varnish with an accurate smoothing that eliminates the straightened and hardened hair from the first coat.

Shellac

Shellac is a natural resin that you buy in flakes and dissolves in alcohol. It soaks a cotton or wool ball wrapped in a piece of cotton. When you pass this pad with parallel and regular movements on the wood (up to four or five successive layers), it releases the shellac.

Wood Staining – Staining or Impregnating?

When we have to treat the rustic wood, in style or even to darken one too light, it is better to use an etchant. Even a wood that is not too precious acquires beauty with this treatment. The stain is a dye, generally based on aniline.

It is found both with water and alcohol. If we use a water-based stain to paint the wood, it is indispensable, to paint on the wood, to pass it on the surface more than once.

But we know that wood tends to absorb water, so it swells. Then, very often, it happens that when the drying process is complete, the treated surface has swellings that you need to re-sand.

Therefore it is not advisable to apply water-based stains on very porous wood. Rather, it is better to treat them with alcohol-based stains.

These are very quick to dry and the only drawback they have is that; if we pass with the brush on a part just treated, there remains a darker strip. You must degrease the surface to treat and to do so we use a solution of water and ammonia. This useful for opening the pores of the wood.

Once ready, we make a test on a piece of waste, of the same essence of the object we want to color. We must use the brush with a firm hand, spreading the liquid as evenly as possible. Once you finish the staining, let it dry for at least 24 hours.

Varnished Wood

You can carry out wood staining in two distinctly different ways to paint furniture, for example, renovate kitchen doors, or repaint plywood furniture. These ways are:

Application of a mordant (water or alcohol) with a sponge, pad or brush and subsequent final painting with a transparent protective coating.

Varnishing with a “stained” product, which carries out the two operations simultaneously.

Touch-Ups to the Surface

If the wood you want to treat  has cracks or small missing parts, it is advisable to fill these gaps with filling resins that you can stain in the same color as the wood.

After staining, you can finish some defects with colored wax sticks.

What Kind of Paint To Paint Wood Furniture – How to Paint Wood with Enamel

When our furniture is built with a less valuable wood or we have special needs of setting, it is necessary to paint the wood with enamel. Wood enamel is a surface covering agent, which you must treat with a light leveling primer before receiving it.

Then we sand it, and after carefully cleaning it, we proceed to apply the enamel with very slow and long brush strokes. To avoid making the hair of the wood “stand up”, use the brush following the grain and only the tip.

This first coat of background to paint the wood, let it dry for at least 24 hours, that is until it hardens well under the fingers. Finally, before passing the second and final coat, we sand again and repeat the glaze.

If we want to lacquer the wood, it is better that we prepare the base with two coats of primers. That will give it more consistency. And so always with the enamel, we pass up to 5 coats.

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