Second Wind

When I moved to Taylor to live with my son, I decided to change the look of some of my furniture, and I began with my office furniture.

I bought some vinyl peel and stick paper that looked like distressed tan & blue wood planks. ©Con-Tact paper used to be the only brand of peel and stick vinyl, but there are many other products on the market that offer a huge variety of patterns. I covered my walnut file cabinet, the top of my desk and top of my small drawer chest. And, viola! I had different furniture.

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Covering the furniture takes time and patience, but I have both. I ordered the vinyl paper and cut pieces to fit the different areas of the furniture, following the grid lines on the back of the paper. I also cut the pieces a little bigger than the area to cover. The trick is to not take the backing off the paper all at once because it tends to stick in the wrong position and will not work.

For example, when doing one of the drawers of the file cabinet, I took the cut piece of vinyl paper and peeled the backing off just a little, lining it up and leaving some paper outside the border, and began sticking the contact paper on one side of the drawer and carefully continuing to pull the backing off a little at a time and pressing the vinyl to the wood until all is covered. It will have a small amount of the contact paper overlapping the border. Press well from one side to the other and top to bottom of the drawer until it is all flat. If you have some bubbles, which sometimes happens, don’t worry. Just get a blade or a needle and make a little hole where the bubble is and press the air out. It will disappear. Use a utility knife to trim the excess around the edges. 

Then, follow the same procedure with the other parts of the furniture until it is all done. I also covered the tops of my desk and a small chest of drawers with the same vinyl paper to pull everything together.