Advice on how to spray paint pine bunk beds

[markjg123]

I've got a set of pine bunks in the usual 'natural' effect. They do have a lacquered finish but it's matte rather than gloss. They are looking at bit dated and boring, but are solid and too good to simply replace with new.

I'm thinking about giving them a spray paint makeover and looking for advice on preparation, products to use and the best techniques for painting. Ideally I'd like to avoid dismantling and paint in situ. I appreciate that I will have to do a serious amount of masking if I do this.

 

[Tigercubrider]

The paint will go everywhere, and a bedroom isn't the place to do a lot of spraying.

If it was me I would dismantle, sand, and prime with a brush.then sand to a flat finish before spraying the colour
Spraying primer is possible but more expensive.

 

[markjg123]

OK thanks for the advice. Dismantling won't take that long. I'll either wait for for a dry day or do it in the garage. So once primed us a very fine finishing sand paper? How many coats of spray paint do you recommend?

 

[Tigercubrider]

Hard to say.

Several ideally, but it depends on colour - prime it so that it keys in and the primer will hide the natural wood colour. Primer dries quickly and you could disassemble , key, reassemble, disassemble, prime, reassemble, and finally disassemble to colour and so on

When it comes to colour you could do several coats quickly, then wait for it to dry and very fine sand, then a final coat

 

[markjg123]

Thanks again. This sounds like the way to get a great finish.

 

[opps]

Why spray?

If you dismantle them are you going to have enough trestles to rest them on whilst spraying, given that you want to prevent dry spray landing on previously coated parts?

Hand painting might be a whole lot easier, and potentially much cheaper and cleaner.

If you are worried about brush strokes (tramlines) there are additives that you can use to reduce them (decent brushes and technique will still be required though).