If you have ever visited this site before then you know that I love painting furniture!! If not, you are about to learn. I am the owner of a gifts and home furnishings store located in Santa Ana California and I have been painting, refinishing and repairing furniture for resale in my shabby chic style boutique for the past six years. I also offer furniture painting as a service to my clients. I get a rush every time I paint a piece of furniture. The huge transformation that takes place always excites me.

My most recent project is this dining table. It had lots of scratches and dings on the top of it, which I filled with wood fill and sanded before I began the process of painting. I have included a video below which shows the entire process. Check out the video and watch this table transform!!

This gorgeous set of antique dining chairs was purchased by a client of mine many years ago at an estate sale. The couple who purchased these chairs have used and enjoyed them over the past several years, but in recent times have decided to change the look of their home.  After adding a beautiful black marble hearth and painting the walls a beautiful grey color, the couple decided they needed to add black accents throughout the room to really finish the look.

The chairs are very good quality and made of solid hardwood, so painting them to update the look was a great idea. Furniture painting is a great way to extend the life of your furniture and much more cost effective than purchasing new. We also recovered all of the seats in a very durable upholstery fabric. The finished product is a beautiful dining room with a pop of color.

This adorable vintage dresser wasn’t this pretty when I found it. It had an awful gold paint job with a super shiny lacquer finish. It got a fabulous makeover with a fresh coat of white paint. The hardware and all of the curvy details where lovingly distressed to make this dresser a shabby chic style beauty!  

It is so amazing how furniture painting can make such a dramatic difference. Everytime I paint a piece of furniture, whether it be for my store, my own home or for a client, it never ceases to excite me. I love watching pieces transform right before my eyes. It is especially gratifying when I paint a piece of furniture for a client and I see their eyes light up when they return to the store to pick it up!

Furniture painting is so fun!! Distressing furniture, beating it up, staining, waxing and antiquing it to create a shabby chic finish is even more fun! 

This adorable dresser is available for purchase. If you’re not local, don’t worry, I’ll ship it! Click on one of the pictures above for more details.

When I think of Shabby Chic style I think of painted furniture and slipcovers. It is a casual and comfortable style that is easy to live with. Our store, located in Santa Ana / Orange County, CA  specializes in creating Shabby Chic style furnishings. We offer furniture painting as a service to our clients and our favorite thing to do is distress, stain, wax and faux finish pieces to make them look shabby and time worn. We also create custom slipcovers right here in our Orange County boutique. We love to create casual slipcovers that can be thrown in the wash- forget about ironing, that is what the Shabby Chic style is all about!

Below is a dining chair that we recently created an adorable ruffled slipcover for. If  this chair doesn’t say Shabby Chic, I don’t know what does!

If you have an old outdated piece of furniture, or just one your tired of looking at, bring it to us and let us transform it! Although we love the Shabby Chic look, it is not the only style we offer. We do furniture painting in many different colors, from matte finish to semi-gloss and everything in between. We also create custom slipcovers in any fabric of your choice. Bring us your own fabric or choose from our wide selection. All slipcovers are tailor made to fit your furniture and in any style you desire.

Furniture painting is one of our specialties here at Alchemy Fine Living. We love to watch furniture transform from something that is old, dingy, maybe even out dated and lifeless to a beautiful piece of furniture that is better than new. A fresh coat of paint on a piece of furniture is a great way to reduce, reuse and recycle; something that is so important these days. The cost of furniture painting is often far less than purchasing new furniture, but gives you the same affect.

In the photographs below see how painting the furniture, that was originally for a little girl, changes her space from an adolescent bedroom into a hip retreat for a teenager.

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After:

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I love white!! White furniture, white bedding, white chandeliers…. you name it! Below is a sample of some white items currently available at the store. Stop by and visit us in Santa Ana, California.

This antique desk has such beautiful lines and great detail. Unfortunately it has been abused over the years and was badly stained, mainly on the top as shown, but in numerous other spots as well. The solution? Paint! Furniture painting is one of my favorite things to do!! It is so amazing how paint can transform a piece of furniture. I know a lot of antique enthusiasts hate painted furniture, but I love it. A fresh coat of a bright paint can really make details pop, especially if distressing is done in all the right places.

This piece was first primed with four layers of a white paint and then the top coat, a light grey, finished it off. Once it was good and dry the desk was distressed along the sharp edges of the top, legs and drawers and of course on the carved detail that decorates this piece. Sanding these places with a heavy grit sand paper allows the color of the wood, as well as, the white primer to show through adding character to the grey finish. The knobs, original to this desk, were also painted. I chose a black paint for the hardware, which I think really adds a pop of color to this fabulous desk! To complete the look and protect the gorgeous new finish I polished it with a nice coat of wax.

Sea shells are the best way to invoke summer. Use them as accents throughout the home to bring the beach indoors or add drama to your summer dinning table as shown below. We have a great selection of shells here at the store that have arrived just in time for those warm summer months that are ahead. From small shells, to unique corals and delicate mother of pearl spoons to shell napkin rings, we have a wide selection of interesting sea life and beach inspired treasures.

This post is linked to Faded Charm

I recently picked up this stunning desk at an estate sale. It is truly a well crafted piece of furniture and in it’s day it must have been gorgeous. The different types of exotic wood, the colors and all the carving on this desk made it a tough decision when it came to painting it, even though I am almost always a huge fan of furniture painting. I hesitated in covering up all those gorgeous wood grains, but the thought of restoring it was way to much for me to handle.

The top of the piece was badly stained, the feet had some dings in them, there were light scratches in numerous places, and years of use in addition to layers of wax had formed a film of gunk. I don’t have nearly enough patience to do all the necessary time staking and labor intensive procedures needed to make this piece shine in all it’s original glory, so instead, a fresh coat of white paint does the trick.

After putting just one coat of primer on this desk I knew I was going to love it! I think the white makes all of the detail really pop. A little light distressing and the original knobs that remain unpainted break up all the white and add a bit of interest.

I recently designed, created and installed board mounted valances over three different windows in a client’s home. The home was a recent purchase and the new owners were not thrilled with the valances left by the previous occupants, if you look at the pictures below you will understand exactly why. This valance screams 1980’s!!

The windows were in need of a serious makeover. My client has a modern, clean line style that is simple, so the curtains needed to reflect that. We went with a tapered box pleat valance and we were all very pleased with the results. My client and her husband saw this room transform into a place that reflected their taste; a room they could call their own. It’s amazing how little changes like this can turn a house into a home.