Hey all, let me start by saying that I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing when your friends find old furniture and think of you before the Goodwill truck! LOL, but I am that girl that my friends call! I have this weird love of making something old and "discardable" into something cool and different, something I love. Now, don't get me wrong, do I love buying new furniture? OF COURSE I do! But let's be real, we are a single income family, and things like new furniture, new cars, and vacations are luxuries to us. So, take my dining room set, for example. I have a very old (30+ years) dining room set. My parents bought it when I was a kid and lived in Germany. And, it's very practical & MUCH nicer than the boys air hockey table that lived in my dining room for 2 years! ;) But, it's not my style.... I really don't love it, I actually really don't even like it that much, except for the fact that the table has built in leaves and spreads out long enough to seat 10-12 people. so, about a year ago, I started looking into buying an INEXPENSIVE dining room set. We need 6 chairs, a table, and I really wanted some sort of serving piece, like a hutch or a buffet. Guess how much that costs, even at IKEA? Around 2K$. Yes that's right, TWO THOUSAND dollars! Yeah, if I have two thousand dollars, I'd much rather take my boys to Disneyland than spend it on a dining room table that gets used, maybe 3-4x per year. Know what I mean? So, to make a short story very very long (sorry, I do have a tendency to go on and on...) I decided that my old set would get a makeover, and maybe I could buy an old dresser or hutch somewhere for the serving piece I wanted. Well, lo and behold, here comes my dear friend Beth one day, offering up this old hutch that had been left in their house when they bought it a while ago. She sent me a pic, good condition, good "bones" if you will... it was cute and I could see it would work well, the dimensions were good too. Here's the before (say hi to my hubby who was helping me with this!)
My friend Wendy and I both love to makeover old furniture, we are both artists, and it's one of the ways that the creativity comes out! You might remember my
headboard from a salvage door project, and the
vintage pantry door from last Fall. I've also painted countless old dressers. The one we have in our room was purchased at an estate sale in 1998, we paid only 80$ for a solid wood dresser with 9 small drawers in the top, and two giant drawers in the bottom. I don't mind telling you, I'm really attached to it and have painted it a couple times! I also have an old armoire that my Mom bought in the 70s, and it looked like she bought it in the 70s, until it got a facelift. I love that armoire! It holds all the boys games and all our DVDs and CDs. Anyhow, I consulted Wendy, since I knew she had recently done a super cute
dresser project of her own. I asked her about this chalk paint, and if it was easier to work with that regular latex paints. She said it was and the real selling point for me was that it didn't require sanding or prep work! It's called
Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. It does cost more than regular paint, it's a bit pricey, but long term I'm looking at doing this kind of makeover on a bench, 6 chairs and a table too. I figured it was worth it to pay more to save myself a lot of hours sanding.
I want to give you a tutorial on my technique. There are probably 400 ways to distress or age something, but here's how I did it:
One coat of the ASCP right over the existing finish. I know it looks like the middle one and center are already distressed, but they are just not dry yet in the pic. One thing to note is that this paint dries LIGHTER instead of darker like traditional latex. It does have a very chalky appearance, and sanding it is a dream! I used color
Duck Egg Blue, and did not add white.
Then, sand a bit off, wherever you want that distressed finish, I hit the edges/details on the piece, and added a few other spots as well.
Then, I added some Antiquing medium to the sanded places, I suppose you could use stain instead. One thing to note is that the chalk paint is very porous and it will not wipe off easily like it will if your paint has some gloss to it.
Then I hit it with a very dry brush with some more ASCP, anywhere I felt the stain was too heavy, I dry brushed.
My next to final step was to dry brush a similar color on, one that's a bit lighter, this is just the cheap acrylic paint from the craft store. It's the same Americana brand "Spa Blue" that I used on the pantry project. I just really feel this step adds a lot of dimension, like layers of paint have flaked away over the years.
The final step was the wax. I did use the Annie Sloan wax as well. It was the clear kind though, and I'm not sure that regular furniture wax would have been any different, but this kind can be tinted, though I didn't do that. The wax really gives it a nice finish, it brings out the color a bit, and gives it a richness. I was really glad that I had done the waxing step, and it's super easy. Just like the Karate Kid "wax on, wax off!" ;) If you know what I'm talking about, you must be as old as me! ;)
And, you know the hardware is always the fun part! I found these AWESOME (burlap!) knobs at Hobby Lobby! They have a lot of knobs that are Anthropologie inspired. I thought these were too cool! They were normally 5$ each, but the day I got them all the hardware was half off, so they were only 2.50 each. I still can't believe what a great deal that is! The cup pulls on the drawers are from Lowe's.
I really am in love with this! And soon after I picked up the hutch, another friend called and asked if I'd like the 6 unfinished dining chairs she'd had sitting in her garage for 5 years. So, I have a LOT more work ahead of me before the whole room is finished, but I am excited to have new chairs to go with my old table & all my other projects! ;)
The one thing I forgot to mention is that I did sand and stain the "counter" part on this. I used a stain that already had the polyurethane built in, pretty simple.
Thanks for sticking by this looooong monster post! I appreciate you stopping by! :)
hugs, Noelle
