This was by far our most ambitious project to date. We have this beautiful mahogany wood bedroom set which includes the King-sized storage bed, 2 nightstands, and a dresser, and it works great for us when we had the Balinese style home decor for the past 12 years. The set is made of real wood and it’s super sturdy. The only thing is with our new home, our decor has changed to the bright and airy modern farmhouse style, and the dark reddish brown color just didn’t fit anymore. This was how our master bedroom looked before…
I contacted a furniture refinisher to see if we could re-stain it to the white color that I wanted, but she was going to charge us $4,000 for the entire set! For that price, we could have gotten a brand new set but we weren’t going to do that. So I explored the paint option and found these forums and FB groups on how to paint furniture with chalk paints. I even attended a one-day chalk paint workshop at Station One Farmhouse that used to stock the Annie Sloan chalk paint just so I know I am doing it correctly. The reason I wanted to use chalk paint is that it sticks to nearly every surface without having to sand, prime or do any prep work on the wood, and it doesn’t have any odor like latex paints. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And it is!
To be on the safe side, I started out with the smallest piece of furniture – one of the nightstands. Darren helped me wipe it down with plain water and get the piece all cleaned before I started painting. After 3 coats of paint and one layer of wax all spread out in a few days, I thought it was good to go until I started seeing a hint of pink color popping up. It started getting more and
I find that 3 coats of chalk paint work best for our furniture because it was a very dark colored wood and I wanted them completely white. Sometimes you may get by with just 2 coats. It’s a personal preference and it also depends if you want some of the dark wood color showing underneath. But no matter how many coats of paint you decide to use, you always have to finish it either by applying wax or a water-based polyurethane sealer on top of the chalk paint. I chose wax because, with our white color chalk paint, the other sealers may turn yellow over time. I’d much rather apply wax on the furniture a few times a year to keep it white than having it all turned yellow in a few years and have to repaint again.
After learning about mineral spirits and Shellac, the rest of the pieces went very smoothly and finally I got everything painted. Now the entire bedroom set looks exactly how I wanted… and the best part was instead of spending $4,000, I only spent $500 on all the materials! If you are thinking of using chalk paint for your furniture and you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
