Chalk Paint® Decorative Paint by Annie Sloan

The harsh winter weather here in Northeast Ohio has put a big damper on my furniture makeover projects... until today! No it hasn't warmed up, as a matter of fact it is 19 degrees outside and there is still snow on the ground. *pout* Seriously, where is the promised spring weather? Thankfully I have discovered Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan!

Being low in VOC's with barely any smell, I can do my painting indoors without waiting for the springtime warm-up. Well hello happiness! Using the recommended Soft Wax finish instead of the typical polyurethane means I don't need the ventilation of the great outdoors. Instead I'm closing off this room and putting plastic down on the floors as if I were painting walls. Finally sweet creativity is mine! Can you tell I am going a little stir crazy from winter? *wry grin*

The Furniture

This dressing table / dresser turned TV console is such an odd and interesting piece. It is certainly not the stylish modern type, or your typical traditional dressing table either. I I would sit and stare at it for hours, wondering what to DO with it. I hate to see it lose it's uniqueness, but find myself dissatisfied it's outdated elements.

I admit I have a fear of painting wood furniture. Gorgeous wood grains should be flaunted not covered up... then again, some pieces are just too much wood, or are simply pretending to be all wood when parts of it are actually a laminate. Such is the case with my dressing table turned TV console. Painting this piece is the perfect solution to cover up some of the mismatched wood grains and updating it. 

The Paint Job
This is my first time using Annie Sloan products and I admit I am excited! Not just because I finally get to paint again, but because I've heard so many good things about these products. Today I am using the Chalk Paint® decorative paint  by Annie Sloan in the color Old White, plus the Clear Soft Wax.  You can find an incredible assortment of colors and everything you need for your project at Annie Sloan Unfolded. 

To begin my project I am testing the paint on a portion of my dresser console. Typically the Chalk Paint® brand does not require any sanding or priming (woohoo, my kind of paint!!), but with such an old furniture piece I wanted to ensure there were no old stains that would seep through the paint. In a case like that I would use a stainblock primer first... thankfully that does not seem to be the case. Nothing is seeping through, so no need for a primer! Even more exciting, it appears that I only require 2 coats for full coverage! Amazing considering this is a dark dresser and a white paint!

See where I threw on a little Paris Grey on the bottom drawer? I am planning to use it on my kitchen table and was excited to see how it looked! Can you say love at first sight?
Typically I would remove the drawers and get to work... but these drawers are particularly pesky to remove so I'm taping off the inside lip and leaving them open while painting. 

Ok, first I have to say it is amazing how quickly I am whipping through this project! This paint dries very quickly. By the time I worked my way from one end of the dresser to the other end, it was ready for its 2nd and final coat! I think it is a combination of quick drying, good coverage, and this lovely round bristled Annie Sloan Brush! 

I often use my small art brushes (pictured) to get in small corners and niches that paint brushes have a hard time adequately reaching. But they had a break today, as the Annie Sloan brush did the trick! The round bristle brush is oddly soft and yet firm enough to reach into this dresser's most pesky corners! It is a nice big brush, so it covers this large piece very quickly. I used mostly horizontal and vertical cross hatched strokes across my piece.

Because the paint dries so quickly, be sure that if you dab to get in corners, you immediately brush over it to smooth it out or it will dry that way. I made that mistake on one corner and had to sand it to get rid of the pock marks it left after sitting for 3 or 4 minutes.

40 minutes and two coats later I am ready to sand this baby! I'm only sanding the edges and any areas where the brush strokes are too accentuated. I want to take just a little off to create a distressed edge look...but only slightly. This paint is so unique from any I've ever worked with... it sands very easily leaving a beautiful and soft finish. I'm glad I put plastic down though, it makes cleaning up a breeze after all the sanding.

Finally I am finishing with two coats of Annie Sloan Clear Wax. There is a dark wax color available, but I wanted to accentuate the white as opposed to the aged traditional look for this particular piece. You can use the brush to apply the wax, or a lint free cloth. I am using a polyester cloth that generates no lint to apply the protective wax. 

And voila! What do you think? 

Today I have learned one important thing about using Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan:  You can actually finish a project before dinner, have plenty of time to clean up, and your husband will walk in and not know the difference. *chuckle* 
Well people, it is official...I am a fan! I'm happy to report that I still have more than half a can leftover and I have a few other projects in mind for it. So take that winter, you can't hold me back anymore! 

To make this piece all that I envisioned, it required new hardware (which is painted!), and some minor construction, so I will be sharing the other details of this project tomorrow. (Click here to read that post)

This is not a paid post, Annie Sloan Unfolded graciously provided materials for review. Everything written in this post expresses my own thoughts and honest opinions.