The 50/50 Paint to Water Technique!

Last week I told you about my "chippy" paint hits and misses. This week I am happy to say that I did not have any misses with this new layering technique. I recently was hired to refinish two pieces of furniture in cream. With these pieces, I felt that just painting them cream would be too boring. I wanted to add more to them. I just recently refinished a small buffet in cream and then dark waxed to age it. I love that look but it can darken the cream too much if over applied. So what is a girl to do when she can't figure out what to do with a piece of furniture, go to a furniture store!!! I went over to a local and very popular shabby chic store. As I walked around admiring all the beautiful pieces, I saw a table that looked just like one that I have sitting in my garage. I asked the girl about it, curious to see the price on it. She said it wasn't finished but one of the chairs was. So I took a peek at the chair. It was amazing!! So beautiful and detailed. I asked the girl what the painter had done. She told me that the chair was painted cream first and then with a 50/50 paint to water ratio, she went over the cream with blue and then wiped it with a rag. Then she detailed the design on the chair with gold gilder's paste. I was in awe!! This made me start thinking. Why don't I do this to the cream piece but with a light color to make it looked aged. I asked the girl if they had done this and if they had a piece in the store like this. They had done this but didn't have anything. She said it would work it just took some finessing.

So together we picked a 4 oz jar of Annie Sloan paint that would compliment my cream paint. It was a Old Ochre, which is a very light beige, with a strong yellow ting. This was the perfect color to add the age I wanted to the cream paint.

The first step in this process was getting the furniture cream. I made my own chalk paint using calcium carbonate, a dash of water and cream paint. Make sure you mix the chalk and water first in a cup, then add paint. I am finding that the best consistency of the calcium carbonate (CC) and water is like the consistency of a tight batch of corn starch and water. Make sure to mix the CC and water really well before adding paint. Then mix the paint and CC very well!! You don't want clumps of chalk in your paint! Note- Painting dark furniture with homemade cream chalk paint is not suggested. You are better off spending the extra money and buying a quart of chalk paint. I say this because it is hard to cover dark furniture. I had to put on 3 layers of paint to the dark coffee table. If you are doing a big piece of furniture, it is not worth the extra time!!!

Once the cream was dry, I mixed up a 50/50 ratio of Old Ochre and water. Taking a nice brush (Purdy or Wooster), I painted over the cream in nice long strokes. I let the paint set for a minute or so and then using a wet rag (must be wet!) I wiped over the paint. I wiped and wiped until I got a look I wanted. Just make sure when you are wiping, you are doing nice strokes. You don't want to see where the rag stopped. The great thing is is that you can literally wipe off all the 50/50 paint and start again if you don't like what you did. This does take practice so practice on some pieces before hand. I did that!

I let the paint dry overnight. I took 80 grit sandpaper and sanded the furniture. I wanted a very smooth finish as well as distressing it too. If you don't want to distress it, then take 320 or 400 grit sandpaper and go over the piece. This will sand away any excess chalk and make the piece nice and smooth. For the coffee table, I used a water based polyurethane to seal it. Anything that will be heavily used should be polyed. You can still go over poly with wax if you want that wax finish look. But you can't go over wax with a water based poly! The side table I clear waxed with Old Town Paints clear wax. Annie Sloan's clear wax is just as good.

Here are some pictures of this process.

 These were my practice pieces. Old cabinets doors that I made into chalkboards!

 You can see the cream base and then the light beige streaks or layer.

I lightly distressed the board and waxed it. Looks amazing!

Larger chalkboard is lightly distressed too and waxed. Love!

 Perfectly aged! Lots of character.

I loved the technique so much I took a light blue chalkboard and painted over it with a 50/50 ratio of graphite and water.

 Lightly distressed and waxed. So cool!

Same graphite used on this bright navy!

 Toned down the color and added more appeal to it.

 

Client coffee table made by her husband's grandfather. It has a lot of meaning for her husband and he wasn't willing to give it up. You can see that it is dark which just means one of my cream layers was a primer. The other two layers finished it.

This it just cream on it. So boring!

This is the final piece.

 You can see the light beige layer. Lightly distressed. Two coats of water based poly.

 

I just love this look!

Before of the client's side table. This is an ikea table. Still in good shape just needs a facelift. The coffee table above and this will be placed in the same room so we wanted the same look for both pieces.

Painted just cream. Again, boring!

This looks so much better! You can really see the layers of paint in this.

 Lightly distressed and waxed.

 What a great way to keep a piece of furniture you like, but give it a new look.

So all in all, this is hands down a great way to make furniture stand out. I am sure I will be doing this 50/50 ratio quiet often. I layering 2 colors of paint and wiping the top layer off with a wet rag (much easier than sanding). I heard that is a great way to get a "restoration hardware" look. So stay tuned for that!
Happy painting everyone!!!

Adventures in Painting Furniture!

I am trying so hard to get back on the blogging train! Life has been crazy with trying to teach a few days a week, tackle painting projects, looking for new furniture, hitting up garage sales, managing my 2 kids, sports, working out, cooking, cleaning, managing this new business of mine and now taking care of our 2 new puppies! Like I said, life has been crazy! So for this blog entry I wanted to fill you in on my recent painting adventures and what I hope to do in the future- okay, maybe today:)

Recently I posted on my facebook page how I was going to try a layered paint look. I got the idea from some pictures I had seen online and found a lady who blogged about it. It was sweet pickins blog. Awesome blog by the way!!! So I had this old piece that I paid a $1 for and thought it would be the perfect piece to practice on. It had some cracks in it so the paint and spackle for this layer technique would fill those gaps.

This is what I did. She said to use wall spackle. I didn't have any that was fresh but I did have wall joint compound. I thought it would work just as well and it did. I mixed some paint and the wall compound together in a solo cup. (I always paint from a solo cup! Maybe I should be drinking too from a solo cup when I paint;)) I slapped the mixture on with a puddy knife. I let it dry over night. I sanded it down the next day and then made a new batch of mixture using a different color. I let it dry over night. I sanded it down the next day. Then I took white paint and slapped some on. I didn't care about being neat. Then I took the sander and sanded the heck out of it. The look I wanted was of a piece that has been painted many times and heavily worn over the years. The look I got was a hideous blue, green, white and wood color piece!!! Project fail!!!!!!

Now, will I try this again. Absolutely! But not on this style piece. You need to do this on a dresser like the women from sweet pickins does and not a side table like I did. I say this because at least with a dresser you can leave the drawers in their natural wood state and just do the top and side with this layered paint look. On the side table it was just too busy and didn't look authentic. I will say that joint compound is awesome. It worked very well, sanded great and covered those cracks in the wood. So even though this was a fail, I never learn anything unless I try it. I lost very little money seeing the piece cost me $1 and some cost on supplies. I actually will use this piece as my practice furniture for other techniques I want to try. Here are some pictures of this process.

Before.

Lots of cracks. That's why it was $1.

You can see how thick the paint was.

 

First layer. After sanding, I did a green layer and then painted the white on.

After much sanding, this is where I was at when I decided to call it quits.

 Not a good look! But you can see that many of the cracks in the wood got covered which is good! It needs lots more sanding for a better weathered look but I didn't want to invest the time. I knew it just wasn't the right piece of furniture for this technique.


Another technique that I tried was creating a "chippy" paint look. First I spray painted the piece. I know, no chalk paint! Then I put Vaseline down on the spots where I didn't want the next coat of paint to adhere to. I painted on a layer using homemade chalk paint- 2 tablespoons of calcium carbonate, 1 tablespoon of warm water and 6 to 8 oz of paint. Once it dried, I lightly sanded using 120 grit sand paper and the chalk paint came right off leaving a beautiful black color underneath. So cool!!! A week later I tried the same technique on a veneer top coffee table that I got for free. That did not turn out!! It looked like a cow!!! I even tried to add another paint color on top of that to see what would happen and it was awful! You can only do this technique on real wood! The coffee table is now used for setting all my paint supplies on! Here are some pictures of before and after!

 Added the bottom shelf first.

 Cleaned it with TPT, then spray painted it black.

 You can see that the paint doesn't want to stick. I haven't sanded yet.

 Now it is sanded.

 Final piece! Love!

 I just glued on that handle just to give it more character.


This is the coffee table. I sprayed it black.

 Painted it light blue and sanded it. Looks like a cow!!!

Then I added red to it and tried sanding. Fail!!! The black paint came up!

 Now it is my work bench for other project hence the paint splatter on it.

Some new techniques that I will be trying soon is layering using a 50/50 of paint and water and then wiping the second layer off to make "streaks" if you will. I heard it takes practice but that is why I have practice pieces!!! It is similar to what I do now with dark wax, but this is with paint. It gives the furniture another dimension. I also just purchased some gilders paste. It goes on with your finger and it highlights details in furniture. It comes in all different colors- gold, silver, patina, etc. It looks stunning!! So stay tuned for my trials and tribulations of it!!!!

Happy painting everyone:)

Getting Rid of the Jungle!

We bought our fixer upper in October and moved in November. Because it was winter, we had time to hold off on the jungle outside our front and back windows while we focused most of our energy inside the house! The house had been vacant for a year, so when I refer to our yard being a "jungle", I really mean that. You couldn't see the front windows of the house. The swing set and pool equipment were buried behind bushes and weeds and the palm trees had been eaten by ivy! It was a mess. I actually remember when I showed my parents the house, they both tried to talk us out of buying the house. Everyone who saw the house thought we were crazy! But lucky for us we ignored their concerns and trudged forward!

As spring got closer, started honing in on ideas for the yard. We didn't have much money to spend at this point and knew we needed at least sprinklers for both the front and backyards. It was actually great having some time to think about what we wanted for the yard. I remember us walking the neighborhood looking for ideas from similar homes. What we did see and like is a sitting area out front. What this meant is the jungle plants in front of the windows had to go. We also knew we wanted to keep most of the grass out front for the kids and the olive and magnolia tree. In the back we wanted to keep with the same layout, but clean it up, get rid of the ivy, plant new plants and bark and take out all the plants in front of the pool equipment. Shortly after the landscaping we ended up building a deck out by the pool area.

So with our plan in motion we began the clean up process. It took about 3 weeks and some help from our parents. I remember packing over 25 bags of ivy with my mom. It was horrible! We hauled rocks from the front yard to the backyard and tore out a lot of hideous plants! It was back breaking work but we knew we had to do it ourselves in order to stay on budget!

Once all the clean out was done, we meet with a few landscapers and discussed ideas and costs. We cemented a porch, got sprinklers and drip lines, leveled out the yard and got bark. To save costs, the landscaper took us shopping for plants so we could get a discount but we planted them all ourselves. In the end we spent about $5,000 on landscaping.

Shortly after we were done, my husband and his father built a redwood deck in our pool area. It was a Christmas gift from his parents so all it cost us was $40 for a gallon of deck stain:)

Tips for landscaping:
1. Have a plan before you start!! Talk with a landscaper, designer, friends, neighbors, etc. for ideas for your yard.
2. Walk or drive around the area to see what you like and don't like.
3. Be mindful of the costs of things and your budget. It is so easy to over spend when remodeling a house or yard. We only had $5,000 to spend which is not much so that meant were we could save money like on doing the tear out, we did it.
4. Cut corners were you can. Rather than laying sawed, we seeded the grass. It was a 1/3 of the cost and it came out beautiful!! You just have to be patient for a month while it grows.
5. Do it yourself it you can. My hubby had never put in a deck before but his dad had. Find a friend or relative to help you out and do some things yourself!
6. Take pictures throughout install! This is important if you ever have a sprinkler leak and need to dig up your lines, least you have a picture to tell you what area to dig in.

Here are some before and after pictures! Of course, the yard is different today because just like our house, our yard is always a work in progress and constantly changing!

 Before.

 

 After. Bushes gone and cement in.

 Bench find at a yard sale!

 Repainted the trim of the house. Table and chairs found for $5 at a yard sale.

 Leveled out the yard.

 Bark laid.

 Moved all the rocks that used to line the driveway.

 Planted plants and grass was seeded.

 About 3 weeks later.

Today. We got new windows and had to redesign the 3 middle windows to meet code. Changed the house trim around the windows and garage.

 Painted the garage doors to match our wood door. We later put hardware on them too. I will blog about this paint project later:)

Back yard madness!

 Pool equipment is hiding in there.

 Garden!

 Swing set!

 All around the pool was ivy and palm trees.

Clean up process begins!

 25 bags of ivy!

Patio repainted and put up a screen on top. $100 fix!

New deck!

 

 

 Sitting area and table! All yard sale finds!!

Pool equipment now. We used the old lattice from the patio cover and put it up. Repurposing:)

 Garden!

 Ivy is gone and now we can use that space for a swing.

 Homemade art work!

Swing set now!

Recently gave the rod iron fence a facelift with spray paint!