Painting furniture comparisons

Ok my dears, first thing is first, I haven't shared this link with anyone....and in 3 days I still have 84 page views! Evidently I am pretty popular, so hello out there to my new friends and potential fans.  No really just be my friend, I don't think that I have the time or energy to have fans. 

So again, I am really looking forward to 2014, 4 days in and I can almost say that this will be the best year ever!  Lots of stuff is crazy, but I still have a pretty good feeling about where things will be a year from now.

So the back story:

I will try to keep this brief.....this summer over vacation (literally like 2 hours after vacation started) I decided to revamp our dining room table set. 

My husband and I bought the set 5 years ago before we got married at a yard sale.  I redid the cushions and the table has served us well.  As far as a table goes it was great, but the color wasn't making me happy anymore, (you can read more about my table redo here) so I NEEDED to change it up. 

The purpose of this blog post is to compare the different ways to redo furniture with paint......so here I go!

For my table I needed foam brushes and rollers
Extra glossy paint (it took me just over one quart)
bonding primer (I had to buy an entire gallon)
Polyurethane topcoat

Results:
I LOVE my table I LOVE the cushions in their new pattern.  The problems? I find it REALLY irritating that I had to buy SO MUCH bonding primer, and that I BARELY needed the 2nd quart of paint.  The good thing is that I now have it to fix the small chips that I am having here and there.  I need to put another poly topcoat on this thing......but the timing.....BLAH! 

I think that this process worked out really well for this project, 6 months later I STILL smile when I look at my table and thing that I changed it up so much.  It is also a nice place to sit with my cup of coffee and computer when I have actual stuff that needs to get done at home. 

The Dresser:

I also love my dresser! 

The backstory: 39 years ago when my parents bought their first house they became landlords at the same time.  It wasn't really their immediate plan, but it worked out well for them, and 39 years later for me.  One of the tenants that moved out somewhere along the line left behind this dresser.  At the time it was something that probably deserved to be left behind, that broke my dad's heart, so he fixed it up.  I am not sure exactly what he did to it, or when this dresser came into our home, but it has been mine longer than I can remember.  I believe he put some new finish on and cut some wood to make the drawers in better shape. 

When we got married I took the dresser, again it has ALWAYS been mine.  It was the idea of redoing the dresser that started the table project after all.

I went with Annie Sloan paint for this project, and I have become totally and completely obsessed with it since then.

For this project I used:
Annie Sloan chalk paint in Provence
Annie Sloan Clear Wax
Annie Sloan dark wax

I also used what I had of the grey paint on the inside of the dresser drawers, totally not nessacary but makes me smile.

I started with the base coat of the Provence paint, it looks similar to a baby blue as you get started, the dark wax made it look more greenish, if you want it to stay closer to the blue side then stick with the clear wax.

I did 2 coats of the Provence and then did a layer of the crackle medium before another coat of the Provence.  I LOVED the crackle! For one it was really neat to see and watch, for another?  I love my dresser!

I also love the wax! Much easier to work with than I thought! And the really cool thing about Annie Sloan? When all the tutorials and videos tell you it is really forgiving they TOTALLY mean it.  I didn't have to be panicked about messing up like crazy, cause it was all right there and I could just go back over it.  I started with just one drawer to be safe but I didn't have any disasters that made me start over!   I LOVED the look that the tiny bit of dark wax gave the piece.

BEAUTIFUL!

The last piece is still in process so hold on:

With this I wanted a vibrant brave color....and I picked yellow.  Still not sure on the use for it, and I picked a chair that had no use for the time being.  Mostly this little project is just an experiment in the painting techniques and such.

For this one I picked up a 3 buck sample of Valspar paint at Lowe's.  They were able to tint it for me and the color options are pretty limitless.  I added a heaping tablespoon of unsanded tile grout (5 bucks for a big container)  and stirred it well.

The first application was a little streaky, looked pretty bad and the details of the chair made it reallllllly irritating.  I actually ended up begging the hubby to help me out because I was getting frustrated.  But he is pretty great and DID help me, so now t the results!

I am still not really happy with my chair, in fact I didn't bother moving it so my dad took It and it is on their back porch at the moment....which is where I got it from.

This was a good project to mess around with as the chair was free, and the sample was cheap,  but I don't think that I will be doing much more of this one like ever, the texture was bad and it didn't cover well at all. On top of that I was already irritated because at Lowe's buying the sample I dropped another paint sample all over the floor and messed up my favorite jeans and my favorite sweater. The sweater is wearable.....my jeans.....not so much :-(

Here are some pics from the recent projects.
Note:the chair was bad enough not to shsre, and I am still searching for the perfect knobs for the dresser, I was in the process of redoing some but they got lost in the move :-(