MEGMADE'S FURNITURE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS
Ever wonder what our process looks like when we refinish furniture?! I'm taking you behind the scenes today & explaining the entire process! Watch our latest "MegMade Mini" and follow along below for our step by step tutorial on how we professionally restore our pieces at the store!
Step One: Take The Piece Apart
The first step in the process is to take the hardware off of the drawers and the drawers out of the piece. This piece came with some really cool hardware, so we decided to stick with it. I love keeping the original look of the piece as much as possible. It preserves the history of the piece, even though the new coat of paint transforms it to fit your new style! At the same time, if the knobs or pulls don't fit the look you're going for, you can always change them out. Changing out hardware is a super easy way to transform the look of an overall piece and really make it your own. As we take the hardware off a piece, we store them in baggies or throw them right into water to soak and later be polished or sprayed. We cover the outside track and wood of the drawers with a protective paper in order to keep the track clean for easy opening and closings of the drawers.
Step Two: Sand Down To Its Original Wood Grain
Once we've taken the piece apart, we sand down the entire piece to its original wood grain. This helps get any of those little knicks, water rings, etc. out. However the reason we love vintage is because of its history and character! Although we sand, there will still be some of those deep ridges present. Sanding also helps get all the previous finishes off in order to allow our primer and paint to adhere to the original wood grain. For pieces with intricate detailing, we go in and sand it by hand!
Step Three: Prime
When we paint pieces in-house, we start the painting process by using a primer to prep the piece for paint. This helps the paint go on smoothy, prevents chipping, etc. We have an air blower that gets all the excess debris from sanding off to make sure the paint sticks. Don't have time to prime (or any of the steps above)? Check out our MegMade DIY Furniture Paint! It requires no prep or prime. Just clean the piece and move on to the next steps! Click HERE to shop.
Step Four: It's Time To Paint!
Now for the fun part! After waiting for the primer to dry, it's time to paint the piece! The nice thing about our paint formula is that the finish is included in the color. For this piece specifically, we went with our in-house color, Hamilton, with a high gloss finish. We use a professional grade sprayer to cover the piece. We do about 3 coats, waiting about 30 minutes in between each round.
Step Five: Polish Or Spray Hardware
Once the piece is done being painted, it's time to focus on the hardware! If we're keeping the original hardware, we scrub it down and polish the knobs and pulls. At that point, we can spray the hardware different finishes and let them dry. The most common finish we do is a brass finish. If we're going with brand new hardware, we skip this step! Looking for new hardware? Click HERE to shop our collection!
Step Six: Assemble Doors, Drawers And Hardware Back On
Once the hardware is ready to go and the piece is completely finished drying, it's time to put it back together.
Step Seven: Quality Check And Wrap it for Delivery
This piece in the video was being made for our showroom floor (aka - it's still for sale!!), but when we're painting pieces for customers, this would be the time where it gets a quality check to make sure your piece came out with the facelift you're looking for! Once it passes the test, it gets wrapped and ready to be picked up to go to its new home.
I hope you found the explaining of this process helpful!! More questions? Email us at hello@megmade.com, and we would be happy to give you an answer! We paint both customer-owned pieces as well as the pieces available for purchase from our warehouse. Click HERE to shop our inventory. Have a piece of yours that you want redone? Send us some photos and dimensions of the piece to the email listed above and we'll send you back a quote to get the job done! Our services comes standard with the choice of one of our in-house colors and a satin finish. From there, we can get custom with details such as custom colors, different finishes, etc. for a small uncharge. We love what we do and we can't wait to paint a piece for you!! If you already have a MegMade piece, tag us on Instagram and Facebook - we love seeing our pieces brought back to life and styled to help you create a home like no other!