Clearing off my basement workbench exposed a ton of ugly stains. If there are stains and paint spills on this surface I at least want them to be my stains and paint spills. So I decided to do a quick paint job to freshen things up.
Before
First, I vacuumed the entire surface really well to get rid of all the yucky basement dust. Then I filled a couple of the really deep holes with some wood filler, but didn’t take too much care to improve the rough finish.
Before
I knew the raw chipboard would soak up the initial coats of paint like a sponge. I didn’t want to squander “good” paint or primer, so for the first two coats, I used some flat gray paint I had a ton of.
Because this space doesn’t get any natural light, I wanted to paint the surface a light color to brighten it up. For the final three coats, I used some leftover almond semi-gloss from the bathroom walls.
Before
After five coats of paint total, the mystery stains were pretty much gone and I had a clean surface to work on. I love doing projects like this that have such a huge payoff for such little effort. And if the finish gets too junked up, I can just give it another coat.
