Decoupage Bed Makeover

I’m decorating and making over the Room Where Old Furniture Goes to Die. Some people call it the guest/craft room but not many.

I made over an old bed frame with Mod Page and paint!

The guest bed frame was a freebie from my old boss. It needed a little DIY love. Scratch that. The bed needed A LOT of DIY love. I knew the stain was chipped and scratched but I didn’t realize there were small cracks in the head and foot boards. The side rails were pretty beat up too.

Guest bed BEFORE

I filled the cracks with wood filler. I gave up trying to fill all of the dings and divots in the bed frame because there were so many. I hoped a base coat of black paint and some colorful details would hide them or at least add some Rustic Fun and Funky charm.

I can justify anything late in the evening when my head is spinning from wood filler fumes.

A non low-VOC wood filler wasn’t my first choice. It was the only available. Normally I don’t use enough to make my head swim but in this case, there was more damage to repair than I originally thought.

I used my trusty Mouse detail sander to sand the finish off the bed and prep it for painting. This is when my Mouse detail sander earns its kibble because the point allows me to sand the curves, nooks, and crannies I'd have to do by hand if I used an orbital or finish sander to sand the squiggly bits on this bed.

I love this sander and recommend it especially if you paint a lot of furniture.

You can learn more about my Mouse detail sander here.

I had a small weather window where it would be warm enough to paint in the garage in between cold snaps. So I skipped my paint sprayer to prime and paint the bed in three separate coats and used a spray paint plus primer to do the job using two.

In theory. Learn why I have bumpy and cracking spray paint and how to fix it in this post here.

Polar Vortex: The Return moved the rest of the project inside the house. Which means no more spray paint.  I sanded, taped, and primed the edges of the bed with low VOC primer and a foam brush to reduce brush marks.

I painted the edges with approximately four coats of red craft paint. I’m trying to use what supplies I have on hand before buying new and for some crazy reason I seem to have a big bottomless bottle red craft paint I rarely use.

Craft paint!

I cut circles using my Sizzix Big Shot and Circle Framelits. I randomly Mod Podged the circles on the rails for fun. The dots might also cover up some divots and painting mistakes due to the small weather window but I’ll never tell.

I’m not sure if the book pages really go with what else I have going on with this bed.

I planned to Mod Podge wrapping or scrapbook paper on the head and footboards since this room is also my fun space. I came up empty. I suppose the stores and paper shops used up their Fun Card over the December holidays and haven’t recharged it yet. 

Time to shop the house!

I went with book pages I had leftover from my book page wallpaper bathroom remodel.  I originally wanted to stencil a fun graphic over the book pages. I found a lips image while cleaning out a box of images and used that instead. I’m not quiiiiiite sure if the head board goes with the rest of the bed. This might be a temporary fix. What do you think?

The rails make the bed too low to the ground to store anything useful underneath it such as my ever growing fabric stash spare bedding.

I increased my storage space by buying two sets of  wood bed raisers and painting them red to coordinate with my craft table. Both sets of four come with a metal pin you can use to steady the raisers so they won't fall off each other or the bed.

OMG. I just realized I put my bed up on blocks. Does this make me like those people who put a rusted out car up on blocks and leave it on their front lawn?

Well I don’t know about that. All I know is it works and I crossed build custom size under bed storage boxes off my punch list. That makes it the best 20 bucks I’ve ever spent.

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