I used to shudder at pieces of furniture that were poorly painted. Drips, major brush marks, streaks and chips. I felt like my paint job would only be as good as the previous paint job and I needed to sand it baby bottom smooth to make it right. Well, I have had a change of heart. I no longer see problems in poor paint jobs. I see texture. Amazing texture just waiting to be highlighted and put on display.
For example...this piece was poorly painted. It was streaky, drippy, chippy and not in a good way. The drawers worked perfectly, though, it's solid wood, has the original hardware and a great shape.
Instead of stripping or sanding it, I just painted straight over it with a mixture of paint (I'll get into that in a minute.) Once the paint was dry, I sanded it heavily to bring out all of that imperfectly glorious texture. Now the streaks and drips look dramatic and even intentional.
As a little bonus, this wonderful spring green color came through under the gray and white layers of paint.
The paint I used WAS going to be a mixture of ASCP Louis Blue, Paris Gray and Graphite, but I ran out of Graphite. Hm. What can I do to darken this color? Well, I have some black chalk board paint. What the heck, let's give it a go and see what happens. Guess what? It worked brilliantly. I mixed in some of the black chalk board paint and it still had great adhesion and distressed well. Who knew?
I was so thrilled that the original glass knobs were a complete set and in great condition, so I just put them back on after I waxed and buffed the piece. Oh, I also tried a new brand of wax...Mylands. It is very, very stinky. Like, stunk-up-my-entire-basement and I-had-to-open-the-doors-in-my-house-to-get-a-cross-breeze stinky. Aside from that, I really like it. It buffed up to a super smooth finish with a wonderful shine, so it's just another option for waxes out there.
I brought this dresser to Lucketts on Thursday, so we'll see if someone else loves the textured look as much as I do.
On a personal note, I am thoroughly enjoying the beginning of fall and the cool weather. I love hoodies and jeans and football and soup and snuggling under blankets and the anticipation of the holiday season, so this is definitely my time of year. We decided to go out and enjoy it today, so we hit some of the highlights of the Gettysburg battlefield.
I'll share some more tomorrow. I really do live in a beautiful corner of the world.
