Wood for Painted Furniture

[Vince Rosypal]

Hello all,
What kind of wood is recommended / used for furniture pieces (night stand, coffee table) that will be painted?
I assume cheaper species.... maybe dimensional lumber or mdf .... certainly not going to paint tiger wood
My wife hasn't said yet but lets go with the assumption that she is looking for very smooth surface i.e no wood grain showing

Thank you

[Cary Falk]

Popular or soft maple

[Wayne Lomman]

Dense and resistant to damage. Grain is easy to fill but it is no fun when every knock puts a dent in your good work. So for me, not necessarily the cheapest. Tops and flat panels are ok in mdf. Edges are a bit softer but flats are good. Cheers

[Lee Schierer]

I use Tulip Poplar when a project is going to be painted. It shows virtually no wood grain after a couple of coats of finish.

[Andy Giddings]

I use Maple and Baltic Birch for those types of projects

[Rick Malakoff]

I use Maple and Baltic Birch for those types of projects

What Andy said, always worked for me!

[Rollie Kelly]

If you can conceal the edges, MDO plywood would work very well.

[John C Bush]

Alder is readily available out here. Harder surface than poplar, machines well, and is reasonable$$$.

[Doug Hepler]

Andy + Rick + me

[Jim Becker]

Popular or soft maple

This would be my advise, too, and is what I primarily use for the same. Mostly poplar for me because I have harvested several thousand board feet of our property over the years, but when I need a "finer finish", I opt for soft maple. (which isn't really "soft"...)

That said, sometimes the texture you want may force you to use other hardwoods that have a more open grain pattern. Since you'll be painting, you can select "less pretty" oak, ash or walnut with sapwood for this purpose.

[jack duren]

Popular is good for painted cabinets but not furniture pieces...

[Ted Reischl]

I don't know where you guys are getting your lumber, but around here Poplar and Maple are NOT "cheap" or "inexpensive".

Select the wood based on where it is used. For a coffee table with a lot of foot traffic around it, I would go with the more expensive maple.

Bedroom set? I have built three bedroom suites from the plans in WoodSmith. I used construction pine I scrounged at construction sites. One thing to understand is that using dimensional lumber usually means a lot of resawing. I do mine mostly on the table saw and if need be finish up on the band saw. Then it takes a trip through the drum sander.

Also, VERY important...dimensional lumber will move a lot when you resaw it, so it needs to be oversized and then allowed to move and get dried out, usually a day or so around here.

We are very easy on bedroom furniture, no kids running around the house, etc. It has been moved 4 times in the last 15 years and a few of the pieces got moving "dings" on them. No biggie, a bit of sanding and some touch up paint and they look great again. THAT is one of the really nice things about painting furniture.

Also, depending on what color you choose the details will show up really well with lighter colors.

If you use a good primer and paint you will actually toughen up the surface of pine. I used oil based stuff rather than latex. Latex seems to park right on the surface with no penetration. Yea, it is easy to clean up, etc, etc, dries faster. But IMHO it seems to take forever to really get dry. Two weeks after painting and if you put something on it the object gets a bit stuck to the surface of the paint. Oil does not do that.

Anyway, that is my two cents worth! If you can find a few construction sites those short pieces are pretty darn good for building furniture. Especially the 2 X 10 and 2 X 12 pieces. Nice straight grain, few if any knots.

[Steve Schoene]

Construction lumber, in my opinion, causes more problems than it saves money. First, it isn't dry--typically leaving the lumber yard at around 19% moisture, when furniture making woods should be somewhere around 8% to avoid problems as the furniture acclimatizes to heated and air-conditioned homes.

Secondly, dimensional construction lumber is softwood which means that it has hard latewood and soft early wood that presents problems in finishing, whether with paint or when using stains. It's easy to get zebra patterned grain. I prefer oil based enamel, but waterborne finishes can work OK. BUT with water borne you want top of the line 100% acrylic enamels. Low priced "latex' paints can exhibit "blocking" where items stick to the surface almost no matter how long it has dried. Good 100% acrylics won't exhibit blocking.

[Vince Rosypal]

Some great suggestions!
Up here our construction lumber is mostly spruce (I think) and very prone to movement. I can mill it to get what I need for sizes.
The lumber yard I mostly go to (Timber Town) has oak, maple, fir etc.... I will have to check which ones are the less expensive ones and try to get a price list.

Consolidated list from above:
Poplar
Tulip Poplar - not sure if we have that here
Soft Maple / Maple
Alder - I have some red alder in my shop form a partial pallet of off cuts I bought a long time ago.... I like the grain of it exposed

Baltic Birch
Mdf - for panels
MDO - if edges can be concealed

[Ted Reischl]

No one ever said working with construction grade material was easy, or pine is easy for that matter.

It takes some getting used to and a bit of planning ahead.

First off, the stuff from the lumberyard does tend to be moist, very moist. Letting it dry out a week or two improves the situation a lot. Lumber standing around drying out does not eat anything.

Second, it pays to purchase the wider stuff, like 2 X 8's unless you like knots.

But back to the movement. If you are building furniture that is based on frame and panel construction most of the pieces are 2 inches or less in width. So there is not some huge dramatic movement that goes on over that distance. Which was the whole point of frame and panel construction to begin with, minimize the effects of wood movement.

It was not so long ago that no home had air conditioning, yet they still built furniture that worked just fine. Where I grew up the humidity went from 20% in the winter to 100% in the summer. Yet, somehow the furniture did not fall apart, crack, etc.

Working with pine takes a little different skill set than working with hardwoods, that is all.

Besides, when we all get old and grey, that nice light pine furniture makes it easy to move things around.

Here is how I handle pine:

Cut to rough length. Resaw and leave about an 1/8 extra for warpage/shrinkage.

Let the stuff stand around a few days. Remember, smaller thinner pieces dry faster, but at rough size I have never hand a splitting problem.

Now start the finish sizing.

For things like legs use the outer edges of wide boards, the grain is usually very vertical. Use the middle stuff for secondary parts that will not be seen.

If a top needs to be made make sure it is fastened so it can expand and contract, have to do this with hardwood too.

I dunno, I have not had any problems building furniture out of pine ::::shrug:::: but I sure read a lot in magazines written by "experts" who do not seem able to figure out how to work with anything other than premium wood. Or maybe they own hardwood lumberyards? Well, that is not quite true...if you read the WoodSmith/ShopNotes magazines you see quite a bit of furniture built out of pine or "douglas" fir.

One wood I do try to avoid when it comes to furniture is Southern Yellow Pine. Only because it gums up the drum sander something fierce. I do use it if I am building outdoor furniture. Virtually all pressure treated lumber is SYP so there is no avoiding it.

Garden Bench 2.jpg

This is a garden bench I made recently. It is PT. I bought the lumber, rough cut it, let it dry for a month out in our nice hot sun. Then I built the bench. The picture was taken after the primer coat was applied. It is now a medium blue color. Hey, I do not pick colors, I am not in charge of that around here.