How to Paint a Fun Pattern on a DIY Picnic Table

by Love & Renovations

5 Materials

$30

2 Hours

Easy

I built this really simple picnic table for my son (who is 3) to play with in our backyard, but I wanted to add a fun paint treatment to it to make it a little more unique. You can see a link to the plans I used to build the table on my full blog post - this tutorial will focus on the paint treatment only!

If you like this project, you can see more easy and affordable DIY projects on my blog, Love & Renovations!

how to paint a fun pattern on a diy picnic table

Start off with a plain wood picnic table (or, really, any tabletop will do!). Start by staining the top of your table with whatever your favorite stain color is. Allow it to dry fully.

Tape off a geometric design using painter's tape. There's no real method to this - - just play around with different designs until you land on something you like. I started with the two pieces that go all the way across the table (there's one vertically and one horizontally, and from there I kind of mentally divided the table into different sections and tried to create a unique design within each section. Make sure your tape is well-pressed down, particularly on the edges. I used a credit card to press down the edges of each piece of tape prior to painting.

Use a paint sprayer to paint the entire table. You can use a brush or roller if you don't have a sprayer, but will need to take special care not to pull up the edges of the tape as you work (a sprayer is faster and is a lot more likely to ensure you don't have any bleed-through.)

After you paint the table, wait about 5-10 minutes and then pull off the tape while the paint is still wet. Once the paint has dried completely, you can seal the table (with a food-safe sealer if you plan to allow your kids to eat at the table!).

You can see more details on the process of building the table and how to use a paint sprayer on my full blog post - I even have a video detailing how it all works!