November 2012

Now that we’re over the anguish of where to put the rocks on our land…let’s talk about the farmhouse table I painted with chalk paint and see how it turned out, shall we? I like how it turned out…sort of…

Here it is in our breakfast nook area with our built in bench seats and mismatched chairs.

I think I might paint the legs white…can’t decide. I have one more chair to paint too…probably a lighter shade of that teal. The teal color was Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Florence. The photo below shows the chair and table before I added the top layer of white paint to the table.

I added a top layer of white to the table then sanded it back to bring out the grain and show the knotholes. I really like that about this paint. Pretty easy to take off just the amount you want.

I sanded between layers of paint too…just a bit. Sanded off more along the edges and places that would normally show wear.

I like how it looks…I’m just not crazy about the Annie Sloan wax that I put on top of it. I followed the directions exactly (though there is a lot of conflicting advice out there on how to best use the wax). I did 3 layers of wax since we’d be using this to eat off of and it would have heavy use. I waited between each layer. It felt kind of tacky–which is supposed to mean I used too much wax…but I didn’t use much at all. I think I should have stopped at 2 layers, because I really like how it felt/looked at 2 layers of wax.

I’ve since buffed this again…ended up using an electric car buffer to try and buff off any extra and really work it into the wood. It still looks a bit streaky to me. I know I could paint right over the wax…but I love how the paint looks now. So. We’ll see if it hardens up. Or I’ve read you can take some mineral spirits to it to take off some of the wax…and then wax again I guess. Anyway, I think it’s going to stay like this until spring when I could take the table outside to work on it…the sanding of the chalk paint makes quite a mess.

I do love how you can see the separate boards on the table, the knotholes, the grain. Really like that. I wanted it to look like an old, worn table.

So there you have it. My first adventure with chalk paint. Next time 1) I might try making my own chalk paint with one of the recipes out on the net…’cause Annie Sloan chalk paint is crazy expensive–though it goes a long way. 2) if I did a table again, I think I might polyurethane the top of it, instead of wax.

I’m going to paint some other smaller pieces and see if I can conquer the wax application. I do love how this paint just goes over anything without priming. Pretty cool.