I will be making a couple of shelves out of poplar (for the top) and crown moulding for the bottoms (in essence a floating shelf).
I want to paint them black to match some things in the room. How do I get a nice smooth painted finish. I see the shelves or painted furniture in stores and they seem to be painted and then some sort of protection on them to make the smooth. BUT the paint and protection don’t seem to be really thick. How do you do that?
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What you see in moderately priced stores has been sprayed, and is most likely a pigmented lacquer, possibly covered with a coat of lacquer clear coat.
To emulate this smooth painted surface by brushing on the finish calls for careful preparation of the wood surface, sanding to 180 or 220 grit, taking care to use sanding blocks to ensure a level surface. Then an enamel primer, sanded very carefully, and patching any dings or other imperfections before applying two coats of high quality oil based enamel. Sand between coats with 320 grit.
When the final coat has had a month to cure, then you can rub it out to the desired sheen. First sand off any dust nibs with 600 grit paper, and then smooth that with a finer paper--1000 or 1200 grit. If you want a satin finish you can rub with grey pads or fine steel wool, lubricated with water (with 2 drops of dishwashing soap (Dawn) to break the surface tension. If you want gloss, I would use rottenstone to rub. It doesn't get super shiny but definately a gloss finish, not semigloss. You can also use automotive rubbing compounds, and get even shinier. Its the rubbing out that gets the surface to really smooth, and looking even nicer than the shelves you see in the stores, although it takes a lot of work.
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