Good day everyone!  Hope you’re all ready for another easy painting project!

Today I have an old wooden spools shelving unit that I picked up at a flea market for a little of nothing.  I know, it looks pretty crappy and the wooden spools shelving is dirty, but I love those little wooden spools for the shelf sides!

That’s what caught my eye when I found it – you just don’t find old wooden spools that often, especially as old as these are.  And I’m pretty sure that this was someone’s homemade project by the looks of it.

So what are we going to do to this wooden spools shelving, you ask?

We are going to give it some new life with color!

So where do we start?

Well, the first thing to do is clean this wooden spools shelving unit with a damp rag to get the surface dirt off.

I then sanded the shelves lightly with some medium grit sandpaper just enough to remove any remaining dirt and varnish remnants. Plus it will smooth out any nicks or minor scratches.

It cleaned up pretty nice and I didn’t do anything to the wooden spools because some of them looked a bit fragile.

Ready for some color!

I started out with painting all the wooden spools with a black chalk paint called Carbon from Americana Decor.  It did take some time to do this being the obvious – they were small spools and there were a lot of different angles.  I turned the wooden spools shelving unit upside down first and painted the bottom of the spools.  Then right side up to get the top of the spools.  It took 2 coats of black paint to get good coverage.

The shelves were the next thing to get painted.  I used a red chalk paint called Romance from American Decor, and they got 2-3 coats of the red.

Once everything was dry, I used a medium grade grit of sandpaper to distress it a bit.  The wooden spools shelving unit was then sealed with my favorite sealer – Americana Decor’s Light Satin Varnish.  I did put 2 coats of varnish on it to protect it from dings and scratches.

The best place to purchase Americana Decor Chalky Paint is at Hobby Lobby or Home Depot.  If you go to Hobby Lobby, they always have a 40% off coupon that can be used on any one item.  So if you don’t mind buying your paint one jar at a time, it can save you some serious money.  The regular price of a jar of Americana Decor paint costs $8.99, but with the 40% off coupon you are only paying $5.39. That is much lower than other chalk paints.  That’s basically what I did to get started and it’s so economical!  That 8 ounce jar of paint will last you for several projects too.

And now for the finished product —

For some reason I don’t have hardly any “after” photos of the wooden spools shelving.  I do know someone liked it because it sold fairly fast in my booth space.  But what a difference!!  This is just another example of how simple it is to take something that looked like it was ready for the trash and make it look like something you would want in your home.

I thought this wooden spools shelving unit would look great with either some antique items displayed on it in the kitchen or I could even see it in a child’s bedroom with books and toys on it.  Where would you use it?

Here’s the Americana Decor paint and varnish I used on the wooden spools shelving.

So, what’s your opinion on this project?  Let me know if you have any questions or tips you’d like to share.  I’d love to hear from you!  And if you would like to find out what our next furniture fixer is, sign up below to get on the email list!

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Here’s another one of our recent projects to check out!  I gave this plain wooden pump some color and brought it back to life.

See ya next time with another simple furniture fixer upper!