The brown, old cabinet gets a makeover with home made chalkpaint

Tilbake i sommer kjøpte jeg denne brune, gamle skap online. Jeg hadde prøvd å finne noe som dette for en stund, og jeg var allerede ganske satt på bying en. Men selv om det er en ganske vanlig møbel her i Skandinavia, de bare syntes å gli ut av fingrene mine. Jeg var allerede ganske innstilt på å finne en, men ikke for enhver pris. Så da jeg snublet opp på dette for ca $ 45 (eller 300 kroner) Jeg hadde ikke tenkt å la det gå! Og jeg allso fått en ny venn sammen med det! Den formelle eieren av kabinettet har vist seg å dele min lidenskap for ommøblere og maleri. Hun ga allso meg de vakre håndtakene for min antikke chalkpainted secretaire . Hva en vinkel!
Men nå I`m procrastinateing ....

Heres skapet. Jeg er veldig lei meg for fryktelig før bildet, men da jeg tok disse bildene jeg ikke se meg selv å sette dem på en blogg. At ideen kom senere!
Så her har du det, en ganske enkel kabinett med beskjedne utskjæringer. Disse slags møbler var vanlig i 50-årene og kom ofte i serier, med matchende spisebord, stoler, cup boards etc.

Dette var min første noensinne møbler som jeg malte med hjemmelaget chalkpaint. Jeg gikk til min malingsleverandør og kjøpte en liten boks med andeeggblå, en mine favorit farger!
Jeg ble overrasket over hvor raskt det gikk! Den chalkpaint dryes veldig rask, og allmost av den tiden jeg var ferdig med med det første laget, kunne jeg starte den andre. Jeg did'nt sand det heller, bare vasket det siden det var full av spindelvev og støv.

Igjen, forferdelig bilde, men her ser dere detaljene på carving etter at de fikk en runde med sliping og mørk voks.

Etter to lag med maling, pusset jeg ned hjørnene og andre områder som ville ha fått en normal slitasje gjennom årene. Så hele stykket fikk et godt lag med klar voks, befor jeg satt på mørk voks på flere strategiske steder. Den klare voks gir den en silkeaktig smooooth lag etter en dag eller to når det har vært skikkelig dynket i en allso beskytter lakken.

Jeg er veldig fornøyd med resultatene! Det matcher selv min chalkpainted 60`s tv kabinett. 

Men dvs et show for en annen dag.

Takk for at du stakk innom!

(You can read about this post over at Songbirds Vintage Inspirational Party!

Can you paint hardware? Sure you can! { How to paint and distress hardware with chalkpaint }

In my obsession with chalkpaint I continue to try it out on different material.
No need to say my husband has layed down the law when it comes to chalkpainting every single furniture, a long time ago.
As I told earlier, this secretaire was missing drawer pullers after I removed the old, ugly ones, and the hunt for the perfect pullers had begun. I searched and searched through the obvious internet dealers. But I am kind of cheap when it comes to buying stuff, and since this blog is about frugal furbishing after all, I couldnt make my self by new "old" drawer handles for over $30-40.
And it is in moments like these when you really find out who payes attention to what you say and do, because a recently acquaintance of mine, who I actually bought one of my makeovers with, saw my announcement on facebook and said she had six pullers she wanted to GIVE me! Now, if youre in to that kind of stuff, you know thats a BIG DEAL! And whats even better, they had the perfect look! I just had to paint them.

 So I mixed up a batch of my homemade chalkpaint, using the color duck egg blue (my favourit!) and started painting. But I had to make shure that they did`nt look completely new, so I distressed them, using sandpaper. and gave them a go with first the clear wax, then the dark to give them an aged look. If I can say so myself, I think I succeded.

And they looked perfect!

Now I only need to find the time to put them on. I suck at finding time to finnish up on last details.
How are you with finishing projects? Sorry to say, but I tend to drag things out by starting on a new project before the old one is completely finished.


(You can read about this post over at Songbirds Vintage Inspirational Party! and at From my front porch to yours )

How to whitewash - A make over of our second-hand dining table -

Right before our big move to our house last desember, my husband was given a laaaarge dining table from his workplace. There it had been used as a conference table. It was big, had rounded ends, metal legs and two extra feeder plates. It had a brown-orange-like color, not so bad. But it did not fit the style I was going for. But it would actually take me about six months before I did anything about it. Our kids use it for homework, playing, drawing, painting and we have our dinners there. So eventually it had sustained quite a lot of "injury" on the top. It had come to the point were I couldnt focus on eating my dinner anymore. All I saw was the staines and cuts on the table top. Something HAD to be done, soon!

This picture was taken at christmas last year, 

before anything was done with the table.

I really didnt know what to do with it, I just knew (and heard) that its not easy to paint a big surface like that without having all those brush strokes showing. Besides, I wanted an old and distressed look on the wood. So, my first thought was to sand it down and give it a turn with homemade staining. You know, the kind you make yourself. "Project sanding down insanely amount of wood" was on. My first thought was: "pft... I can do this with sanding paper! No problemo!" Way problemo!
It was too time consuming and my arms was killing me. So we had to find a sanding machine.
(should have done that the first time....) It made the work a lot better, but unfortunately, we still had to do a lot of manuell sanding to get all the way "in there".

Then, when I thought we had done enough sanding (obviously NOT), I startet putting on the DIY staining. I am shure this is a suuuuper good idea on light/new wood. But for this sucker, not so mutc. It was horrible! I even tried waiting several days to let the stain get settled. But that never happeden.
Burned-out furniture was not the look I was going for. So..... what to do?

Obviously, I had`nt done enough sanding. But at this point, looking at the results, 

I had given up...

I spent a couple of nights searching Pinterest for ideas and tips, and came up whit drypainting!
Obviously, there are different ways to do it, but I came up with the right formula for my paint.
I used 1 part paint and 1part water, stired it well and used a wide pencil and just slightly dipped the tip in the paint. Then I went bananas! Haha... Since there is only a tiny amount of paint on the pencil, I used a little force to get it on. Just brush it! Brush it reeeeaaal good! Up and down in big movements. And preferably without lifting the pencil halfway on the table. You want the pencil stroke to go all the way from one end to the other. A rag is allso a very good tool here to wipe of excess paint. Remember, its supposed to be dry!

See the difference?? The strips of light there is actually my chandelier.

Now, THIS is what I was going for!

I actually did this three or four times (I lost count...) before I was satisfied.
Now I had to come up with some thing to look it all in, and protect it against new injuries. I read up a little on that to, and the solution was simple. Floor lacquer. It is strong, sustainable and see-through. Perfect! Another good advise I was given her was to use the matt kind. Not the shiny one. Then the white paint most lightly will turn yellow! And we did not want that! Another tip here is to apply it with a roller! No brush strokes:)
After two coats of matt floor lacquer, it was done! And we had a shiny new dining table!
It was a lot of tryal and failing, but it was worth it in the end. And no it sits much better in our dining room. And it can take a lot of beating to, thanks to the lacquer!

Mutch better!

Have you ever tryed drypainting? What is youre experience with it?