Hi! Happy Wednesday! Before I share about this little bench, I wanted to say sorry for not posting my favorites from Rugs USA like I mentioned on stories yesterday. The time just got away from me last night… They’re still having a 45% off sale though so I probably will go ahead and do that post anyway so that you guys can reference it whenever they have another sale, which is very frequently.

I’ve gotten some questions about this bench so I wanted to share a little about it on here. It’s really nothing fancy! I spotted it in a thrift shop with Stephen, imagined it painted and in our entryway, saw the $20 price tag, and scooped it up. Speaking of imagining it with paint, that’s something I always try to do while thrifting, along with keeping an open mind. I’ve found so many things that I love the shape/feel of but that doesn’t fit well into our decor so I imagine it a different color or with different hardware to help me determine if I should get it or not. If I don’t think I could make it work with everything else we already own, I don’t get it. If I do and the price is reasonable, I buy it and then enjoy planning and executing another thrift update.

We all know though that sometimes these projects don’t go as planned… This one was somewhat one of those. I started this project by attempting to use General Finishes chalk paint with a paint brush. In the perfect world, I would’ve just been able to use my paint sprayer and had this thing done in about 5 minutes but my sprayer has been giving me trouble (or it’s user error). I applied one coat all over the bench and it was very streaky so I let that dry to apply a second coat. By the way, I think painting things like this with a brush are a huge pain but I do it anyway, obviously. The spindles take forever and there are so many angles to paint. Moving on… When I started to apply the second coat though, I got pretty frustrated when it still looked streaky and didn’t want to commit to painting a third so I whipped out the chalk spray paint. Thank goodness for that stuff!

If you want to do a project similar to this, I would first prime the bench with this primer and then spray it with this spray paint. This bench I painted had varnish on it which is why I decided to use chalk paint in the first place so I consider that coat of paint my “primer” of sorts. There was no way in heck I was going to sand the entire bench first. Luckily with chalk paint, that isn’t necessary. Anyway, use the primer I suggested above. Spray paint is so much faster but if you already have some on hand that you have to brush on, you can also use that! Once I had the “primer” on my bench, I did two coats of spray paint. One can per coat.

Here’s how the bench looked when we purchased it:

Here’s after two coats of Krylon Chalk Spray Paint:

It’s much better right?! I wasn’t a fan of the orange tone of the wood so I really love how it looks now with a couple cans of white spray paint. The best part is that it took me less than 10 minutes for each coat (make sure to let them dry in between!) after I got past the primer debacle.

I searched for similar options for my thrifted bench and found this one that I love! I found the exact same one at multiple other stores but $40+ less expensive at good ol’ Walmart with free shipping. I like that it appears to be a tad wider than ours. If I hadn’t found the bench at the thrift store, I definitely would’ve gotten this one.

I hope you all have an awesome day! Let me know if you have any questions.