DIY vintage style painted table – before and after

I spotted a little dark wood table at a car boot last summer and immediately saw its vintage, shabby chic potential. I love the distressed painted furniture look, and after buying the table for just £2 I figured I couldn’t go wrong. It took me a lot longer than planned to get round to painting it, but now it’s finished I couldn’t be more pleased! The darker wood looks great underneath the chipped white paint.

This was the first time I’ve bothered to use primer paint when painting furniture and it definitely meant I could get away with fewer coats, plus it seemed to give a nice smooth base for the paint layers. So I might be a primer convert, unless I can suddenly afford nice Annie Sloan paint of course!

Top tip: when distressing your painted piece with sandpaper alternate between using the paper as normal and by wrapping it round a block of wood or similar (I used a particularly chunky screwdriver handle). By wrapping the sandpaper round something sturdy the paint chips in different sizes and shapes to when simply sanding, giving a more realistic distressed look.

Before

After