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When you are tired of furniture and want to spruce it up on a budget, there are many paint effects that can be employed in making them up to date and fun, bright and cheerful, and even innovative, without needed any real skill other than patience.

Do be careful that the value of your furniture items will not be diminished by painting. Many antique items can be spoiled and it is wiser to get an appraisal of value before attempting to paint those valued antiques. For normal run of the mill items of furniture, of course there is little risk of making a valuable item into anything other than something more modern and here you are pretty safe.

Many items can be updated, including the following:

*Tired looking bedroom furniture.
*Kitchen door fronts
*Wooden chairs
*Chest of drawers

THEME

Deciding upon the kind of theme that you want to create within the room where that furniture is going to be placed is essential, since you can tone the furniture to suit the room. For example, in a child's bedroom a theme that is popular with children can be used, and there are all kinds of paint effects that work well in children's bedrooms. For the nursery, toning down color to pastels can create a wonderfully mellow and relaxing atmosphere. If the room is plain, then the furniture can be painted in bolder color, and even using marble and sponge effects. The scope available to the home crafts-person is astounding, and most of these kind of jobs can be performed with minimal skill.

PROTECTION AND PREPARATION

Always place the furniture to be painted on a dust sheet. The piece will need rubbing down with a series of coarse to medium sandpaper, filled as appropriate where damaged with wood filler, followed by fine sandpaper, cleaned with a tack rag or dust-brush before painting with one coat of undercoat, and one top coat. On items that have heavy coating, stripping is an option, although if painting rather than varnishing, this isn't necessary.

SPONGE, DRAGGED AND MARBLE WORK

Tools required for the paint process:

*A small sponge.
*Paintbrush.
*Fine artists paintbrush (for marble effect)
*Newspaper.
*Undercoat
*O il based paints in three colors.

Following the preparation as above, undercoat the item of furniture to be painted and leave to dry. Lightly sand the surface and dust-brush ready for topcoat.

Sponge finishes are innovative and extremely decorative. Here, choose several colors to blend with each other. Three colors of different intensity work well, having a main background color. You can have really

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