I found this fantastic vintage Mersman corner table to paint. Vintage pieces are so much fun to transform with ASCP.

When I got it I could see that someone had started to sand it down in some spots so I had a feeling this was going to cause some bleed through because the stain wasn’t sealed anymore. Because I Pinterest waayyy more than I should, I had seen others post about this problem. I already had a can of Shellac on hand and had used it a few times with other projects. I started by shellacking a few spots I could tell where going to be problem area’s, but it turned out that much more of this table would need it.

My can of Shellac was mostly full when I started this project but was almost empty when I ended. Any place where the protective coat has been sanded away, worn away or scratched can cause the wood stain to bleed through ASCP. Especially if you are using a light color paint. Chalk paint works much better on wood that hasn’t been stained or that is sealed. Here are a few pictures of what came through after a coat of paint.

Can you see the pink area’s? You can also see the shiny are’s where I used the Shellac to seal it. In more than one place I had to paint it several times and Shellac it several times to finally get the stain to stop seeping through. Usually when I have had this problem a quick, light spray works but because there where so many places on this table where the stain was not sealed it took me a few tries to get everything. This piece took me a little longer to paint than I was expecting but eventually the Old White stayed white! I distressed it using a sandpaper block and then waxed it. Then added just a little bit of dark wax to bring out the accents on the arms and edges.

I love the new look of this vintage piece.

Thanks for taking a look 🙂

Cindy

Annie Sloan Chalk paint has become a bit of an obsession for me so now I’m calling it my hobby! 😉 And my new obsession hobby is now becoming a business venture of sorts. Rather than paint everything in my house with chalk paint I have decided to find fun pieces to paint and sell them. This is one of those fun pieces. Problem is I don’t really want to sell this one. I absolutely love the way it turned out. I went looking for another chair to paint because I loved how the other one turned out and still had some of this amazing fabric. I found this on line and knew it would be perfect. I love the rose and really wanted it to stand out. The chair was in great condition as far as structure but the seat was a bit torn up and the finish was wearing in some area’s. Here she is before:

First thing to do was remove the seat and the torn up cover. The padding inside was still in good shape despite the wear on the fabric. You can see what it looked like after I took it apart.

I used the old fabric as a template to cut out the new piece that would go on the chair. I also added a layer of batting to make the seat smooth and even.

And then I stapled it on making sure to create the same fold on each corner. Then it was time to paint it. I wanted this chair to look a bit different the other one so I went with Old White. I wanted to flower to stand out so I first painted the entire chair with Emperor’s Silk. Then I painted the Old White over that. When I painted the rose I carefully painted over the flower making sure I didn’t get any of the Old White in the details. That way the red was left to accent the white.

After I painted 2 coats of Old White I went back and wet distressed the Old White so that hints of the red would show through. I didn’t go through the red to show any of the wood.

I love how it turned out and will be sad to see it go. I am looking forward to finding more fun pieces that I can use this technique on.

Thanks for taking a look 🙂

Cindy

Chairs may be my new favorite thing to paint. I came across a listing on line for an old chair selling for $10. It was listed with another item that I was interested in buying but when I inquired about both of them the seller said she had already sold the other item but the chair was still available. I wasn’t sure I wanted it and told her I would contact her the next day. Well the next afternoon she contacted me and asked if I was still interested and I figured why not. For $10 I may as well pick it up and try it out. It was probably a beauty in it’s day but it wasn’t looking so good now.

The chair has great lines but looks like someone left it out in the weather.

I called it the “hairy” chair because it looks like whiskers are coming out of the wood. I could also rub some of what was left of the stain of with my finger. I didn’t want to sit on it because who knows how much of the chair was going to walk away with me on my clothes. 🙂

Normally with chalk paint there is no sanding needed but this chair needed sanding. There was a bit of dust on the floor after that but once I sanded the “hair” and old stain off it was a nice sturdy chair. I did have to do some gluing because a few places were warped (i’m sure from being outside in the elements).

You can see the wood pulling apart.

A little wood glue and clamps did the trick.

Next it was time to take the seat off. Under the seat the original tag was still stapled to the bottom. This was nice because I was able to look on line and do a little research on the chair. From what I can tell this chair is from the early 1960’s.

You can see the tag and the company name along with the registry #. It’s nice to have this info and fun to find out a little about this old chair. It was even more fun when I took the vinyl cover off to find the original fabric on the seat. Sixties green velvet! Unfortunately along with the green velvet was some green mold! eek!! Someone definitely left this outside to get wet. And the vinyl covering didn’t give much protection.

I’m sure in it’s day this green velvet was gorgeous! But the mold sent this to the garbage can immediately. Then I cleaned the wood to get rid of the mold. I also had to glue the wood because it was also warped and splitting.  I didn’t keep any of he original padding because it was looking pretty worn out and a little of it was touching the moldy material. Better to just start fresh. I bought new padding (foam padding I found at walmart for $6 that is made for chairs) and cut it to size. This was a bit of a chore because for some reason I thought a 2 inch foam piece was the way to go. Wrong! It was huge so I cut it in half to make it about 1 inch thick (maybe a little more) and then cut the top so that it was curved and not square on the edges. Then to make it a little more smooth and even I added a little batting. Once all the repair work was done I could staple the fabric to the seat and start painting. I pictured this chair red and ASCP Emperor’s silk is AMAZING! Now I needed fabric to go with it. I found the cutest fabric at Hobby Lobby (LOVE Hobby Lobby)!! So with my discount I got a yard of it for around $25. I only used 1/2 of the material so later I will show you the 2nd chair I painted!! (spoiler alert: it is even more fun than this chair)

2 coats of Emperor’s silk paint and a coat of clear wax and this chair was done!

Hello beautiful!! Such a fun accent piece!

So this is my “almost didn’t happen” chair project! So glad the cute lady who sold this to me was persistent! Seriously… chairs maybe my all time favorite things to paint! In my next post I will show you the second chair I painted.

Thanks for stopping by

Cindy

I can’t remember where I first heard about Annie Sloan Chalk paint but I can tell you that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I do remember looking on Pinterest, seeing all the amazing pieces of furniture that had been transformed with this paint and deciding that I needed to find out what this was all about. After reading a few blogs and checking out the official Annie Sloan web site I made a list of things I would need. Then I did a search to see who sold it locally and found a cute little shop here in Utah called Drab 2 Fab that sells ASCP. I headed on over and went in to see what they had. I had already seen a list of the colors Annie Sloan had to offer, but in the store they had samples up on the wall. It was nice to be able to see, in person, what each color looked like once it was painted and waxed. I wasn’t 100% sure until I got there that Arles was the color I wanted to start with. I know – yellow! But have you seen this yellow? Amazing. So I purchased a can along with samples of Old White and Pure White. I also bought a can of clear wax and a waxing brush. All the blogs I had read about ASCP suggested buying the wax brush. They were right. It is a must have. I was excited to try out my new paint but I didn’t want to paint something in my house, hate it and then be stuck looking at it. Fortunately we had 2 end tables that were set to go to charity so they became my first project. If I hated them they would still go to charity and if not then yay for me – new end tables! 🙂

These are the end tables. Kinda sad looking. They actually looked worse before I cleaned them. And as you can see I wasn’t able to remove the pen marks my kids left on them. :p

It was time to try out my new paint – I was a little nervous to tell the truth. I had painted fun holiday projects before, but not furniture so this was all new to me. I opened the can, stirred the paint and dug in. I used a paint brush I bought at Home Depot for the chalk paint.  It worked great. You can see the black large nail heads on the top. Those don’t come off so I painted around them. (kinda hard to tape those) I did get a little paint on them but ASCP is easy to wipe off, even after it dries, (before the wax) so that didn’t pose a problem.

Here they are, all painted in their glorious yellowness! See…amazing!

Already I’m falling in love with ASCP!

One of the things I discovered is that you can generally see through the first coat of paint, which can be a fun look if that is what you want. I didn’t with these so I painted a second coat. Once it was painted and waxed I decided to add chevron stripes. Kind of daring of me don’t you thing. 😉 I painted these about a year and a half ago and chevron stripes were just starting to really show up on everything so I thought it would be fun. Thanks to Pinterest (I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Pinterest) I found a few posts that demonstrated how to tape a chevron pattern. These end tables are a bit rustic so I felt like it would be good to make the pattern a little less than perfect to keep with the style. Here is what that looked like.

I used the sample of Old White that I had purchased with the Arles and I just did one coat. Once it dried I used sandpaper to distress it and then I waxed over the design. I was really happy with the results.

I guess because I always knew I may not be keeping these (if I ended up hating them) I didn’t work too hard to make the pattern on each one identical. But I actually really like that they are unique. And in fact I ended up liking them enough to keep them. And now they are the end tables we use in our family room in our basement.  A year and a half later they still look great. Once the wax cures (this takes a few weeks) the paint is protected – even from my teenagers! 🙂

So these were my first project but not my last. I will be posting more project on this blog so come back and see what else I have painted.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Cindy