Studio · Furniture
Furniture painting and restoration
Repainted furnishings to shop, or a beloved piece of your own restored: straight painted, faux finished, aged or hand-painted with designs.
When a piece is worth saving
Most furniture worth repainting is already doing its job. The joints are tight, the drawers still slide and the proportions are right, but the finish has gone yellow, orange or chipped, or it belongs to a color scheme you left behind. Paint is the cheapest way to make a good frame fit the room it lives in now.
Solid wood, an inherited chair, a dresser that has followed you through three apartments: these repay the effort. Flimsy pieces held together by staples and veneer are a harder case, and an honest look at the piece comes before any promise about the result.
The studio puts it plainly: “Shop our studio for repainted furnishings or allow us to restore a beloved piece of your furniture.” Either you choose a finished piece, or you bring the one you already own.
A ladder-back chair half sanded to bare oak and half repainted dove grey on a studio bench
From bare wood to topcoat
A painted finish is only as good as what happens before the paint. The piece is cleaned of wax, oil and years of polish. Glossy factory finishes are sanded or deglossed so the new coat has something to bite into. Loose joints are glued, dents and gouges filled, and hardware comes off rather than being painted around.
Then a primer matched to the surface: one for bare or stained wood that would otherwise bleed tannin through a pale color, another for laminate and slick veneer that rejects ordinary paint. Color goes on in thin coats, sanded lightly between, rather than one heavy coat that sags. If the piece is to be aged, glaze is worked into the recesses and wiped back by hand. If it carries a design, that is painted freehand once the ground has cured.
A clear topcoat finishes the job, chosen for the piece: tougher for a dining table that will see plates and elbows, softer for a cabinet that mostly sits and looks well. Renaissance Revival Painting works from Providence with a fine-arts background, so the call to make about color and character is made with a trained eye. Phone (401) 351-4757 to talk through the piece.
Living with a painted piece
Give it time. A painted surface feels dry long before it has hardened, and the first couple of weeks are the time to be kind: no hot dishes, no dragging, no harsh cleaners. After that, a damp cloth and a mild soap are all most finishes ask for.
Wear is part of the plan on an aged piece, and a feature of it. On a clean, straight-painted one, small chips can be touched up with the leftover color, which is worth keeping labeled in a drawer.
A painted piece also changes the room around it. A dove-grey chair beside a deep wall color, or a hand-painted border echoing a stripe on the wall, ties furniture to the architecture. That is where furniture painting meets the studio’s other work, such as faux finishes and a considered color scheme.
Owner-operated in Providence since 2001 · fine arts and color theory · free estimates
The register of finishes
The studio lists four ways a piece of furniture can leave its hands. Choose one, or ask for two to be combined on the same piece.
Looking for color first? Start with color consultation.
- Straight Painted
- One chosen color over properly prepared wood, so the coat lies flat, wears well and hides nothing it should not.
- Faux Finished
- The wall techniques, marbling, striping and texture among them, carried onto a tabletop, a drawer front or a whole case.
- Aged
- Edges softened, glaze worked into the corners and color worn back the way years would have done it.
- Hand Painted Designs
- Borders, flowers and lettering painted freehand by the same hands that paint the studio’s murals.
Techniques we also use on furniture, shown here on walls.
More of these finishes, all on walls, are on the faux finishes portfolio.