Painted Ottoman | CKGraphics & Design

Painted Furniture

If you follow my site, you know that I love to paint walls. One day, while painting, I was thinking about how, if you drop paint on the carpet and smear it in, trying to wipe it up, it stays there...dyed forever. (so I usually let it just drop and dry in dot, and then cut the dot out, but I digress)

I repainted my entire first floor from tans and khakis to grays instead...because gray is "in" now. I also thought it would make it all lighter and brighter.

After I repainted all the walls, I realized that my 7 year old BROWN couch now looked REALLY bad...really brown! duh, self? I can't afford to buy a new giant couch (big family) right now so I have to live with the brown sectional for awhile longer. But that leads me back to the first thought....if the paint dyes the carpet (forever), then can't you dye fabric furniture with it?? ;) So, I looked it up and sure enough, its a real thing all over Pinterest, etc.

Reviews said painting your fabric furniture doesn't make for the softest seat so I decided just to try to paint my ottoman instead!

I took it outside to see what would happen if I painted it. :D

I only bought one quart of paint...and used the entire quart on just two coats of paint on the ottoman.

For paint color info, click here.

So here's my before, outside, ready for experimentation:

The internets suggested using a fabric medium that I bought at Michael's. I am not if it really made much difference though. I only used one bottle, per the whole quart of paint.

I used a large squirt bottle and squirted the fabric down first, each section, so that it was really wet. Then I applied my quart of blue paint (color info here) with a paintbrush. Rubbing the paint into the wet fabric, in all directions.

I let it dry, out in the summer sun, in then did a second coat the next day. It took me a hour to do each coat of paint. Felt tedious to spray it all down and paint it, spray more water to blend it in well.

After the two coats, the fabric was pretty hard... as expected.

I did read online that you could use sandpaper to soften it. I used my orbital sander and sanded it pretty well. It didn't seem to bother this fabric at all. I think it just bumps off the 'edge' of the paint on the fabric. It worked very well and did soften it up!

It's still not as soft as the original couch...my family said, no, I could not do the whole couch. lol

But I think the color looks soooo much better! It looks like blue velvet.

I also sanded and spray painted the feet silver.