Refurbishing a Shelving Unit
This project was a shelf my girlfriend used with baskets for her yarn.
She wanted to refurbish the shelf and build crates to hold the yarn.
We started by sanding down the whole unit to remove and of the varnish or stain that was on the unit now. Then we made our own chalk paint and painted the full unit inside and out.
If you have never worked with chalk paint then you should know that this dries very fast.
Every website we read suggested using a wax to protect the paint. Therefore we went with a black wax that you paste on then rub off after a couple of hours. This give it a very nice shine.
Building the Crates
We bought an eight foot by 8X1 piece of lumber for the sides and a sheet of quarter inch sheet of plywood.
We cut the 8X1 to the sizes required for the front and back then used a drill and jigsaw to cut out the handles. I then cut the plywood down to strips to create the sides of the crates.
The bottom of each crate is just a piece of the quarter inch plywood cut to size.
Prior to putting everything together we sanded and painted everything with a chalk paint. Using the same color of chalk paint as we did for the shelves. With the exception of putting on the wax coating over top.
One negative that we had was when we placed the shelf beside her desk we hit the side of the desk. It was just a little bump but this caused the chalk paint with the wax to peel off right down to the wood.
We did not use any kind of primer as every website we looked at said this was not necessary. On future projects I think we would prime the unit and let dry then apply the chalk paint.
I do have other finishes that I like, so maybe chalk painting wont be in our future.
Thanks,
Kelly