An Ornate French-Style Table, Repainted for a Surrey Bedroom

This is a table that was clearly built to be looked at. Carved shell motifs on the apron, scrolled cabriole legs, a shaped top that curves rather than cuts a straight line anywhere — the kind of piece that earns its place in a bedroom rather than just filling a corner of it. The Reigate painted bedroom table had been finished white once before, and somewhere along the way that paintwork had given up. Chipped along the carving, yellowed in the recesses, tired everywhere the light caught it. Lovely bones, badly let down by the finish sitting on top of them.

Our brief was simple: strip it back and paint it properly, keeping every bit of that carved detail crisp rather than gummed up under layers of old paint. The scrollwork and shell carving meant a sander was never getting into most of it anyway, so the bulk of the old paint came off with stripper and a scraper, worked carefully into the grooves by hand. Patient work, but the only way to do it without rounding off detail that took someone real skill to carve in the first place.

The top was where the job got properly awkward. It turned out to be multi-fibre board (MFB) rather than solid timber — not a material we'd choose, and definitely not one you want anywhere near a power sander. MFB fibres fur up and tear the moment an orbital sander gets too keen, so we hand-sanded the top with progressively finer paper instead, saving the power tools for another job where they could do their job properly.

With the old paint gone and everything keyed back, we sealed the whole piece with Zinsser BIN. It's our usual stain-blocking primer, and on a repaint like this it earns its keep twice over — blocking anything left over from the original finish and giving the fibreboard top a stable, sealed surface to bond to, rather than letting it drink the topcoat unevenly. A Zinsser undercoat followed, building body and evening out years of wear before any colour went near it.

For the topcoat, our customer chose a Dulux eggshell mixed with Farrow & Ball Wimborne White — a clean, classic white that suits a bedroom without ever feeling clinical. We applied it in two coats with a light denib sand in between, working carefully into the carving with a smaller brush so the shell motifs and scrollwork stayed sharp rather than blurring under a heavy hand.

Delivering the Painted Bedroom Table

Back in its bedroom, the table now sits against a soft grey-blue scheme — crisp white venetian blinds, a bed dressed in the same muted grey-blue linen, and a pale tiled floor that keeps the whole room feeling calm. A single ceramic vase on top is the only thing it needs. The carving finally gets to do what it was carved for, catching soft light rather than hiding under tired old paintwork.

A satisfying one to get right, precisely because it wasn't straightforward. If you've got an ornate piece that's lost its shine — or a fibreboard top nobody wants to take a sander to — get in touch. Because we can paint your furniture.