I took these outdated wooden bookshelves and refinished them for my clients home office based off a canvas painting she found and loved. Now, they are fresh and ready for a new life ahead! See how I did it with my sprayer and how you easily can do it on your own project, too!

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You can find all of my favorite tools mentioned below & used in my projects at my link here: https://www.amazon.com/shop/restoreitwithrachel

My customer brought these bookshelves to me from her Aunts Garage. She saw the potential in them and wanted to use them in her new home office. They were solid wood and in great condition so any finish was going to be possible.

She found this beautiful canvas art and asked if we could pull colors from it. She loved the navy blue, the light gray/blue and the gold accents, too!

I first removed the original hardware but kept the doors on for ease of use since I knew she wanted these painted. I then used Simple Green cleaner to get any grime or dirt off the bookshelves. After that, I used my Surf Prep sander to kinda scuff up the surfaces and make sure the paint would have something really grippy to stick to. I cleaned once more with Simple green and then a clean water rinse.

After that was dry I used my Wagner Flexio 5000 fine control tip paint sprayer with Sherwin Williams “Grandieur Blue” which is essentially a Navy Blue. I loved using their urethane paint for cabinets and trim. It flowed easily through my sprayer and left a really durable finish. I ended up using two coats of the paint and didn’t add a topcoat or use a primer since this is an all-in-one paint.

For the inside and shelves I used the same type of paint but mixed a little bit of “modern gray” with this blue from the outside to get the color my customer was asking for. I also did two coats of this color.

After seeing the finished product, my customer ended up wanting to reuse the original hardware (minus the faceplates) so I cleaned that up and reinstalled.

This was a fairly simple and with the sprayer especially quick project! I love the way these turned out and my customer does, too!