The chalk I am referring to is of course chalk paint . . . oohhhh how I LOVE me some chalk paint!!
Hello everyone . . . I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I spent my Saturday working on a couple of projects for my own home (for a change) . . . using my home made chalk paint.
The first project was a big one . . . this display cabinet.
Ordinarily I would never paint furniture inside, preferring to take it out to the studio, but this cabinet is in a precarious place to get in and out of.
It normally sits in an alcove in a walkway. . . which is perfect for the unit but a difficult place to move a heavy item in and out of. That’s probably why it has been on my ‘To paint white’ list for quite some time. In the end I decided to simply pull it out from the wall, slide a drop cloth under it and work on it right there in the middle of our walkway between rooms. The sanding made everything a bit dusty, but I decided it was all worth it once I saw the first coat of paint finished.
I spent a couple of hours preparing the unit for painting. . . sanding, removing hardware and taping up the glass. I can’t stress how important the prep work is to the final outcome of your painting project. . . that’s why I devoted a whole chapter to ‘Preparation’ in my book Simply Shabbilicious – Decorative painted finishes for the shabby at heart.
A perfect example was one of my students who worked on a similar cabinet project recently (I secretly had cabinet envy for her gorgeous cabinet), but she was so eager to get to the fun part of painting that she kind of skipped past the prep stage. When she went to distress her final paint coat she found she had very little control of what paint chipped off or fell away from the timber. I know a lot of people have experienced this same thing and it’s not that they don’t know to prep. . . I think it is more that until you have a bad experience you don’t realise how important the prep stage is to the final outcome.
For the cabinet above I stripped away all of the previous varnish before painting and because I used chalk paint I didn’t need to prep the bare wood. When I was finished painting, I distressed lightly with fine sand paper and then applied a thin layer of natural bees wax all over. To give the project more of a French provincial look, I then applied a darker wax in the detailed areas, which when rubbed off, left a darker stain in all the grooves. You wouldn’t believe what a huge difference a colour change has made to this cabinet and the space it lives in.
My second project for the weekend was finishing a magazine rack I picked up thrifting quite some time ago.
Here it is in the rubbing back stage. When I got it, it was scratched and neglected, but at just a couple of dollars I figured I could do something with it. I liked the overall shape and the little feet were kind of cute.
Before I painted it, I applied a fleur de lys design using texture paste and a stencil. . . oops, didn’t get a photo of that stage. I left it then to thoroughly dry. . . which in this case meant it was put aside and forgotten about for a few weeks, so it was definitely dry!!
A couple of coats of antique white chalk paint and it’s a new look for an old discarded magazine rack.
When I was finished painting, I made a faux glaze which I painted over the texture design and then I rubbed most it off, leaving a vintage distressed look. It certainly adds another dimension to the French shabby look.
For those of you in Australia, don’t forget my Market Night is tonight. . . 7 pm sharp on Facebook. See you there!
Hugs ~ Kerryanne
