Painted furniture

I've done my first shabby chic piece and despite a few newbie errors it was really easy and lots of fun. This is a fireside stool that was in the house, dark brown oak and not really my style at all. I love the legs though! I thought it would be great in Charlotte's room as a play chair.

Here's how I did it and what I did wrong here and there:

The first step was to sand it or strip it. In this case I just sanded with a medium grit paper and left it at that. I used medium grade steel wool on the legs because they were hard to sand. It took me maybe an hour to sand it and clean it.

The second step was to paint it with ordinary flat, white latex paint or primer. I have a lot of flat latex primer because I'm doing a temporary fix on the kids room upstairs. I just used this and did two coats with a brush. I let it dry for a week. All the information I read said to let it get really dry before you got to the next step.

After a week I took sandpaper and roughed up the edges, especially the legs. I should have spent more time on this, standing back and looking and then working on it more. I was rushing because I was eager to see the results and this was a mistake. In some parts it's overdone and many parts not enough.

Then next I took some brown shoe polish and I accented several areas. I just did this by putting it on and then wiping it off. I then rubbed hard to make it blend. As you can see in the photo it wasn't such a good job! Shoe polish as I found can work well but it's a strong stain and it really gets in there and stains white paint quite well. I was surprised that so little could go so far. My mistake was to not go slower with this step. Once on you can't get it off so easily. I also should have rubbed it a lot longer, like 20 minutes or more all over instead of my measly 5 minutes! (other ideas for accenting the piece is using gel based paints, acrylic craft paint and watercolors--you don't have to buy a kit from the paint department--please don't!)

The last step is to take ordinary uncolored furniture wax (paste) and put on the piece. Let the wax dry a little before you buff it out. I usually wait 10-20 minutes. Once you buff it out you get a nice result which looks nothing like the flat latex version you started out with. It kind of yellows and it takes on a pretty sheen. Make sure when you buff you really get the wax deep into the piece so do it for a good 30 minutes or more. You can even use 000 grade steel wool to ingrain it into the wood. An antique refinisher taught me this trick.

Seb said he didn't care for the piece because he doesn't think that it matches well with our house (and by this he means our furniture that we already own). It doesn't match he's right but I plan on doing an entire room in it and I think it really pops if you do all the furniture in a room or in an entire house in this light, shabby tone and style. So he'll just have to wait until our kitchen and bedrooms are finished and he'll see.

Oh and for some decorating inspiration I like the room on the cover of this book. This gives me lots of ideas for my bedroom!