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Let’s take a peek behind the curtain on how to take an old, dark-finished piano bench and refresh it with a new, vibrant finish, upholstery, and flair.
Materials:
Bench purchased from the ReStore ($25)
Supplies ($25)
Choose your item to restyle by the unique ‘feet’-ures. One way of doing so is by identifying the furniture feet, which is fun! Furniture feet can give you clues to the age and quality of a piece.
We chose this Victorian piano bench because of its ‘claw and ball’ feet (a.k.a. dragon feet).
Good news! Stripping paint isn’t always necessary. For this piece we simply cleaned warm dish soap and then alcohol to remove the oil and grime and sanded the body of the bench with #220 sand paper to rough up before painting.
This bench took 3 coats of black paint. We chose the dark color to contrast with the bright upholstery cloth – have fun with your colors! Be sure to be patient with painting in layers and allowing each layer to fully dry.
Furniture upholstery isn’t that complicated, it just takes time and patience.
The claw and ball feet had several decades of patina and dirt on them! We could have left them that way, they looked old and interesting, but let’s clean them up.
Take your metal polish (we used Brasso) and toothbrush or scrubber to scrub the metal on your dragon feet. Use a cotton cloth to wipe away the grime for the finishing shine.
Thank you to BentWoods Studio professional upcyclers Alice and Jerry Goble for unveiling the creative process of refreshing old furniture into beautiful new pieces.
Feeling inspired? Get started on your own DIY projects by checking out the current furniture selections at our metro Denver ReStore locations!