Painting furniture

I've been building up to doing this for ages, months, possibly even years (well, a year maybe). I have an emotional block about painting stuff. A voice inside my head tells me I shouldn't do it because I'll make a mess of it and ruin a perfectly good piece of furniture/room/whatever. I watch people in blogland, and sometimes in real life bring about wonderful, beautiful transformations, but I've never been able to bring myself to do it. I think it revolves around perfectionism (that's other peoples, not mine), and me being too lazy to do things properly. I've been gathering, in the room that is my workspace, some of the worst furniture in existence so that I can feel ok about painting it. 

The table below for example. I'm actually very fond of it because it was given to me by someone I like, and it had been their kitchen table for many years. It may have been lovely once but the top, which is made from two big pieces of wood has a huge gap down the middle, the whole thing is riddled with woodworm holes, no longer alive I believe and the legs have been used by cats as scratching posts and are in various stated of shredded-ness. I am telling you this because I had to tell myself these things over and over while I painted it in order to not be completely traumatized by the process!

Table before painting

 I was really pleased with the result. The paint is some I bought several years ago from our local recycling centre, so it didn't even cost me much. I didn't bother with any sanding or stuff, just slapped it on!

Table after painting

 Fuelled by my success I set about this hideous and dreadfully bodged cupboard. Again, it may have been a nice piece of furniture once, but those panels in the doors for example are just held in with nails. It looks like someone like me bodged it!

Horrible cupboard before painting

 On with the paint...

Beautiful cupboard

There's no stopping me now. All the other wood coloured things you can see in these pictures are destined to be painted. There are some really awful shelves that I dragged out of our damp and dusty stables, much to Vince's horror, the big table that has to have a board on top of it because it is so incredibly warped, and also a chair (not the one in the photo) that I also dragged out of the damp and must stables. I'm so excited.
This isn't earning me any money of course, but my workspace will look fab when Country Living come round to photograph me. That's a bit of positive thinking by the way, they aren't actually on their way yet!