How to "Gold Dip" Your Furniture

by Living in a Fixer Upper

Easy

Gold dipping is just how it sounds; the piece should look like you dipped it into a tub of lovely molten gold. Then voila, a statement piece that will catch the eye and make you slightly giddy.

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The side table that became my gold-dipping guinea pig was a Goodwill find, and it needed a LOT of cleaning and work before I could even paint it. I gave it two coats of General Finishes milk paint in the color "Linen".

Once you have your base coat painted and dried, you need to decide on which brand of spray paint as there are several good options for metallic gold spray paints. There's a great guide I used from the blog "Chris Loves Julia" in which he used 4 of the major brands and compared them. Very helpful for picking which one I wanted to use (and lucky me that I got a none-exploding can of Valspar).

Using good ol' Frog Tape, I measured around the table and placed the tape where I wanted the gold paint to stop and used trash bags to secure the rest of the table from getting any gold on it.

Important: make sure the tape is completely flat against the furniture, otherwise you may get some leaks underneath the tape and you won't get the crisp lines you're looking for.

Tip: Spray paint works best in temperatures of 50-80 degrees Fahrenheit (which means I just barely got to try this project in time before temps plummeted). Always spray paint outdoors or in a very well ventilated room.

I did two coats of spray, waiting for the first coat to fully dry overnight before doing the touch-ups with the second coat.

I let the second coat sit overnight, and the next day I slowly peeled away the tape and it revealed the finished product. Look at how perfect those lines are! They make me smile.

I lined the drawer sides and inside (woot for mod podge!) with a beautiful black and white damask scrapbooking paper, which I think really adds an extra special detail and elegance every time you open the drawer.

If you'd like to see more pictures of before and after, how I did the paper lining in the drawers, or just check out what other projects I'm up to, check out and follow me on my Home Talk profile and/or blog! :)

dipping dipped

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2 of 34 comments

Hannah V on Nov 24, 2014
LOVE everything gold dipped!

2 Reply
Dee on Oct 11, 2018

Oh my.....you really created a BEAUTIFUL piece. The black and white both in and outside of the drawer set it off nicely. WELL DONE!!!!

1 Reply