Using DIY Chalk Paint

Oh my goodness.....I painted a table! I have been wanting to paint an end table that has been living in my family room for over a year. It was a $10 table from an estate sale, but over the year, I may have ruined the top with cold drink condensation.

To be honest, this was a project that I thought I wouldn't follow through with. I had zero experience painting furniture and didn't want to ruin an almost perfectly good table.

But I put on my big girl pants and decided to take it on. I wanted to use chalk paint, but didn't want the expense of using chalk paint. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I found a DIY chalk paint recipe. I have tons of leftover paint, including some paint samples, which is what I used. I just needed the Plaster of Paris. I paid $5 for a huge container. I could probably paint everything in my house with the amount I now own. It was super easy to mix up too!

So I set out to paint my table. After reading through several posts, I knew this was not going to be a one coat job. The first coat is pretty streaky. The paint dries pretty quickly, but I left it for a while in between coats...mostly because sitting on my garage floor is not comfy.

This also gave me time to make a stop at Hobby Lobby and look for a new drawer pull. I found one I liked and headed back to paint another coat.

By the second coat, the table was looking quite a bit better. I was gaining some confidence in my painting ability!

I ended up doing 3 coats of paint. The last coat seemed to finish it up. Now I should seal the top with wax, but I haven't done that yet. I am super happy with the how it turned out.

This project gave me so much confidence to paint more furniture. I am on the lookout for a coffee table for my family room and am ready to tackle the paint job!

Tell me about your furniture painting adventures!

Fabulous Paint

Painting has officially started. This is my first stamp of making my new house my new home. It is such a good feeling!

With the help of Pinterest, I was able to get an idea of what I wanted. Some of those colors changed because of budget and because of how they looked on the wall.

So what did I pick? Well, like many people, I am obsessed with Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter. I love the color, but my wallet wouldn't have loved the hit. So I found a Behr color that is quite similar. Sculptor Clay will be used in my entryway, hallway, family room, up the stairs and upstairs hallway. It is quite a bit of space. I can't wait to see what it looks like all finished.

I wanted a dramatic color for my dining room. The room has a chair rail, so I could go with a dark color without the room feeling like a hole. I did stick to my guns on this color. At first I thought the color looked muddy, but Kendall Charcoal is going to be a great dark gray.

Because of the chair rail and that the room opens up from my living room, I wanted a nice creamy white to complement the dark gray color. I found that in Coastal Beige. It sounds like it would be too brown, but it is a beautiful cream color that will look great in the living room.

Upstairs is where I was able to be a little more colorful. I found a great duvet cover from Pottery Barn, so to go along with that I chose a Pottery Barn color from Sherwin Williams called Naval.

Pinterest heavily influenced my choice for my work-from-home office. I wanted something similar to a Tiffany Blue, but not that intense. One color kept popping up over and over again - Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue. It is such a pretty color.

The last room to be painted for the moment is my craft room. This room is my creative space, but it is also going to be my personal office. So I wanted something that was calming and happy. I choose a light purple by Behr called Hint of Violet.

I didn't want a stark white for my closets, so I chose a color that I had originally picked for the living room. It was not a creamy white like I wanted, but it would work perfectly inside the closets. It is Behr Silky White.

Picking out pain can be nerve wracking. I wanted to pick the right colors that I would be happy with for a long time to come. But I think I chose well and picked some great colors for my home.