Magazine Rack with Handle-Project #11

This is our second magazine rack we have refurbished. The first one was a magazine rack that we stained. We wanted to do something a little bit different with this rack so we decided to paint this one instead. It was not easy to paint because of the columns on the side. The ability to get to the inside of the magazine rack was not easy. I started with the primer and eventually Casey had to take over and finish the project. She is a better painter to begin with but I simply could not reach the inside through the columns and get a good coat of paint onto the rack. So the early stages of work were done by me and the later stages of the project were done by Casey. So here is the work of updating a magazine rack.

These are the pictures at the time of purchase. We bought it through an online auction. It was a good solid magazine rack. However, it did show some wear and tear that it had gone through. So it needed a little bit of work just to bring it back to looking brand new. We had done the wood stained rack already so we wanted to do something different with this. We decided to paint this rack so we could continue to keep expanded what we can and have done. So we went ahead and cleaned the rack with a mix of water and white cider vinegar. After wiping it all down we sanded the rack to get any rough edges and gashes the rack had through being used. After sanding the rack, we wiped everything down again and prepared the rack to get primer and paint.

We primed the magazine rack with the Valspar primer. This puts down a first coat onto the magazine rack to help with the painting. As you can see the primer goes on first and starts to cover the wood color but not completely. This white primer helps to cover the wood color so when we add our paint onto the magazine rack it is not fighting the natural wood color. The white primer helps to make the cover-up easier for the paint we are using. When we are working on pieces, we only work about 2 or 3 hours max due to this being a fun little hobby and not our jobs. So everything we are doing usually takes the full day of work on this hobby. After putting the primer on, we have to let it sit and dry and that means the end of the work for the day. After the primer we then start applying the paint.

The paint we used is called Barrel Cactus by Pittsburgh Paints. It is a very light green paint. As this moment we are using paint that has been leftover from different house projects and different rooms getting painted. The leftover paint from that work is being used to finish these refurbished furniture projects. Now that the magazine rack has been primed, we started adding coats of this Barrel Cactus paint onto the rack.

This is the finished magazine rack. The rack looks really good but it took many hours and a whole lot of patience. I think we had to put 3 coats of the Barrel Cactus green paint to completely cover the wood color coming through. Due to the lightness of the paint it just did not cover up the color underneath. This is the part of the project where I had to turn over painting duties to Casey. I struggled to get paint into the bottom part of the rack without it looking terrible. My hands were just not small enough to fit in there at the angles it needed to be able to get into to get the paint into all the little spots of the rack. Casey was able to do the painting and make the paint nice and even across the entire rack. After the paint we used a sealer to put a clear coat over the paint to keep the paint from getting wet and peeling off.

This clear coat or topcoat was applied after painting the entire wood rack. This helps to protect the rack in case any water spills onto the rack. The topcoat helps to protect and keep the paint underneath from flaking or peeling off.

Overall this project gave us a different experience then staining the wood rack in the earlier project that we did. It took a little bit longer then expected due to the number of coats of paint we had to apply to make the rack look new. I hope we can find a buyer for this piece and they can enjoy it for many more years to come.