How to Paint a Gray Weathered Finish on Furniture

Hello!  I hope you’ve had a great week!  Today I’m looking forward to sharing an easy way to update or change the appearance of undesirable or outdated wood furniture.

I’ve noticed that gray weathered wood furniture has become very popular as of late!

via Target

A friend/client recently asked me to help her refresh her family room.  As part of the refresh she bought THIS Storage Cube Organizer (affiliate link) to replace a too small console with no storage. It’s from Amazon for $83.

Since the console had a gray weathered finish we decided in order to tie room together that it would be great if the end tables on each side of her couch could have the same finish.

Her current end tables had an orange-y oak top and an rubbed oil bronze iron base.  To save money (and because I love making over furniture) I suggested we try to re-frinish the tops of the end tables in the gray weathered finish and she agreed!

Here is the BEFORE:

And now the AFTER:

This took me maybe at the most 20 minutes to complete from start to finish and is such a simple process that even a novice could do it (in fact I only painted one of the tables and my friend’s oldest daughter who had never painted furniture did the other table after watching me and did just as good as I did).

HOW TO GIVE FURNITURE A GRAY WEATHERED FINISH:

1.  You’ll be happy to know that no sanding or deglossing is needed.:-)   With a paint brush apply one even coat of Behr’s Premium Solid Color Weather Proofing All-In-One Wood Stain & Sealer in the color Light Lead (I only needed a sample size…a little bit goes a long way).

This is one coat of the solid wood stain.

2. After that coat dries to the touch apply an even coat of Valspar Signature Colors Tintable Glaze in the color Wooden Wagon with a paint brush.  Tip-  Don’t buy more than the quart size a little bit goes a long way!

If you are in a hurry like I was you can use a hairdryer to speed up the drying process in between coats.

3. After that coat dries apply a second coat of the glaze in streaks across the piece of furniture.  When I say streaks I mean work in  only one direction and be sure to leave some areas unbrushed so that it gives the appearance it is weathered.

Here is a little video I tried to do of myself starting on the 3rd step.  But then somebody started talking to me and you can see in the video I can’t paint, take a video, and talk to someone at the same time very well!:O)

I know it’s short but hopefully it helps you see what I mean by creating streaks a little bit better.

Also it’s important to note that if you prefer your furniture to be darker than you could an extra one, two, or three even coats to to step 2 before adding your last coat of streaks.

We didn’t use any final protective coat and haven’t have any problem with it but if you wanted to you could (I would just ask someone at the paint desk what to use).

I’m so glad that we were able to match her new “console” table and use the end tables she already had.  I’m thinking about using this same technique in an upcoming project (think DIY ceiling beam)!

I’ll be back on Thursday to share the mood boards/plans for two room makeovers I’m about to start.

I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and as always let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks for reading!!:-)