A couple of weeks ago I posted on Facebook that I had bought Annie Sloan Chalk Paint for the very first time. Yeah, I was an ASCP virgin… probably the last one out there!
I bought it to paint my chewed-up dresser I bought off of Craigslist. But then I got to thinking it would be perfect for my bar stools at the kitchen counter. I had been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them. In their original state, they were the exact same color as the floors. I knew I wanted to change them, but how?
You may wonder why I would buy bar stools that are the same color as my floors. Well, I didn't buy them … a friend gave them to me! I had been searching for some simple, cheap, used bar stools to go in our kitchen. {And my Goodwill sells the basic Target brand for the same price they are NEW at Target. I've been looking for a DEAL.} So when my friends and I were cleaning out our closets as part of our Project Simplify, one of my friends was getting rid of some bar stools. And they ended up at my house! Yay for free!! {Thanks Emily!}
I really want three bar stools, so I'm waiting for another one to fall in my lap. Good news is that when I find it, I'll just paint it like the others and it'll look like they belong together.
If you search for bar stools on Pinterest, there are so many cute ideas. You can see what I've pinned to my kitchen board. These were a couple of my favorites:
Well, the stools proved to be the perfect little project to test out my new chalk painting skills. I'm so glad that I started with these before I painted my dresser, because I learned a few things.
I painted the stools with two fairly thick coats. I didn't think the first coat covered enough, and the second coat covered a little too much. And then I read somewhere that there's less chalky mess if you wax it first and then distress it. So I did that, but I used so much sandpaper just sanding through the wax and then the paint that I didn't get to distress it as much as I had planned to. I waxed them again after I distressed them and then buffed them.
Whew, that's a lot of painting, waxing and buffing. I know one of the big complaints about chalk paint is that although they say there's little to no prep, so no need for primer, there is the need for wax. So really there is still a two-step process. But I found that I like waxing much better than priming. There's just something artsy about applying wax, whereas applying primer is just a pain.
I'm sure happy with how they turned out, even though I plan to change a few things with the dresser. I'm glad they finally don't look like an extension of the floor. And I'm really loving the color!
By the way, the color is Annie Sloan's Chateau Gray. It looks like an olive green to me, which is what I wanted. I'll tell more about why I chose this color when I post about my dresser.
What have you painted with chalk paint?
Do you have any tips for me?
What's your favorite chalk paint color?
