Whitewash Side Table

Over the weekend, I stopped in o Roost to start looking for some fall items. I saw this beautiful white washed buffet there and immediately wanted to try that technique myself. 

This little side table found it's way into my car at Goodwill one day a few weeks ago. Immediately, I fell in love with it's petite size and all the great detail. Not to mention, it was almost in mint condition. 

It had that bright orange oak look, so I was curious how the whitewash would look with that. I started looking on Pinterest for blogs that go over how to whitewash. I stumbled upon Orphan with Makeup's blog post and started from there. From my coffee table project, I had some left over Velvet Finishes paint in Rococo. I mixed this three parts water and one part paint. 

I started applying it with a brush and then wiping it off with a wet rag. This literally wiped off all the paint. So after that trial and error, I applied it with a paint brush very lightly. One section would dry pretty quickly and I would move onto the next section.

Here is how it looked after one coat. I love how it toned down the bright orange oak color and gave it such a pretty color. Also love how the wood grain still shows through.

Once I brought it upstairs into natural light, I fell in love! 

Now, I am trying to figure out what bigger piece I can try whitewashing on next, stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, hope you are having a great week so far!

-Shayla

Farmhouse Bookshelf

With painting furniture, I tend to look a lot of places for inspiration and ideas. One of those places being Instagram and I found NAK Home pretty early on in my painting hobby. I just loved all the unique pieces she found and her style. She also happens to be one of the sweetest and nicest fellow furniture painters that I have met on there. She would paint some pretty unique bookcases and I loved every single one of them. 

So, for a few years here, I have been on the hunt for one. Not having much luck, mind you. I find mostly pieces here in Wisconsin that are from an entertainment center or meant for a big tube TV. Well my friends, I finally found one! I couldn't believe it when I found it at GW and the price tag was still on there. If there was a prank TV show for furniture finders like myself, I swear I was on it with this piece. For the price and quality of the piece, I was on my furniture high for the rest of the day. Next step was getting it home. I didn't even bother to measure it because I knew I was going to get it home, one way (my SUV) or another (my dad's F150). 

Turns out, it did fit into my SUV, if my front seats are almost all the way forward. We got pretty close on the way home. 

Here is a full view before I did anything:

First, I took off the hardware and the cleaned the entire piece with TSP and some hot water. I was envisioning white for this piece, so I wanted to not have to spray the entire piece with primer. 

I cleaned up the hardware with Bar Keeper's Friend and took a picture this time. Check out this transformation:

This truly amazes me every time. All the tarnish literally just wipes off with a rag and some elbow grease. 

After cleaning, I lightly sanded the bookshelf and then shop-vac'ed it to get the dust off. 

At the ReStore, I found SW Dover White paint in satin, so I decided to mix this up to make some chalk paint for this piece. Think I paid $1 or $2 for an almost full quart of paint. Such a great deal for such an amazing color. I used my HomeRight Finish Max sprayer in my garage to paint.

After the first coat:

One tip for using this sprayer: definitely make sure to do a few test sprays first. Then determine if you need to adjust the amount of paint with the spray control that it is spraying. This will really help you avoid the dreadful drips that magically seem to appear!

Between each coat, I lightly sand with 150-220 grit paper and dust off before the next coat of paint. This will really help you get that smooth finish.

Here it is after about 2.5 coats of paint and some distressing:

I then sprayed on 2 coats of General Finishes HPTC in Satin. I lightly sand after applying this as well. 

Definitely one of my favorite pieces this year!

Thanks so much for reading!

-Shayla

Linked up to: Making It In The Mountains | Chic on a Shoestring