Bring New Life to an Old Picture Frame

Do you often find yourself having a lot of old picture frames that are scratched, beat up, or just not in style anymore?  Or if you're like me and between all the moving around, half of your frames no longer have glass.  This particular frame I'm showing today had BOTH problems.

Here you can see some of the scratches.

Before repainting a frame, or you would use this process also if you just wanted to make a shabby chic looking frame, you need some sand paper or a sanding block like photographed.

Sand down all the edges.  Especially if you want to make a beat up frame into a shabby frame, all you really need to do is sand down every edge.  That's really all shabby chic frames are, painted frames that are sanded down to the wood or color underneath the top coat.  I originally intended to keep my frame with just the sanded edges, but then decided this particular frame was better painted.

Here you can see most of the edges have been sanded.  If there are scratches on parts of the frame that isn't an edge, you can still sand those out, just use the same technique you use over the scratch and do it all over the frame.

...and the corners.

If I were going for a shabby chic look, I would at this point just leave the frame like this, or maybe add some stain to the sanded areas.  However, for some reason that wasn't doing it for me on this particular frame, so I decided to paint it.

If you choose to paint your frame, put the first layer on in a thin coat.  I've noticed that the first coat helps grab on to the second coat better so it will look more even, so it isn't really important that your first coat looks great, just that it is fairly consistent.

And always go with the grain...even if there isn't a grain you should assume where the grain is.

I'm starting to love it, but I'm noticing the black from the back side of the frame.  Since I'm not putting a photo in this, I needed to paint the back as well.  If you're putting a photo or art inside the frame, it isn't necessarily necessary to paint the back. ;)

 The back after being painted...

Once my paint dried well for a day or so, I used a few coats of spray on polyurethane on it to help keep it from getting scratched up in the future and prolong its life with this paint job. 

 I really love this color!  It is Redstone Blue Spruce by Valspar, in case any of you are interested.

Curious what I did with the frame?  See the rest of the project HERE!