Chalk Paint Rookie >> A Dining Table Redo

It started with an innocent round of garage sales one spring Saturday. I saw her. Loved her. Bought her. Arranged to take her home in my parents van. Terrible color. Lovely shape. 

Such potential! 

And a great opportunity to try out Annie Sloan chalk paint. There aren't very many dealers in Canada, but one happens to be in St. Thomas where a decorating soul mate of mine just so happens to live. She helped feed my addiction to painting wood and picked me up a quart of French Linen.

Here's what she looked like before:

Terrible color, right? So orange! But I just loved the corners and the legs. I knew paint would do wonders and after hunting down a couple of YouTube tutorials on using Chalk Paint, away I went! Soon she was looking pretty beautiful. 

I've heard mixed reviews about chalk paint and after working with it, I must say that most of the process is great. No sanding/prep work is so great!! The waxing is another story altogether and after working with on this table, I've come to the conclusion that I like wax for low traffic things. Such as the legs of this beauty. But for high traffic surfaces I definitely prefer poly as a finish. Within three weeks of using our table, I knew that I'd have to re-do the top. The wax simply wasn't holding up to daily dining room/office use. (Tim turns it into a desk several hours each week)

One thing I found curiouser and curiouser was that in almost all of my googling, I couldn't find a quick and easy answer to "Can you poly over chalk paint instead of wax?" Still not sure...?? Any insight on this one? 

And so...round two.

I sanded down the table top, originally thinking I would stain it a medium tone walnut. But! Once I saw it finish-free, I decided that I wanted to try and keep that look. The grain was interesting, although high contrast. So after googling "white washed wood", I gave that a try to keep the tone but lessen the contrast. And I loved the result!

We used this French Country looking dining room table for a couple of weeks. I sold our old set that I re-did several months ago. And although the paint vastly improved this garage sale find, Tim was never sold on the shape as much as I was. What endeared her to me, turned out to be a big flaw to Tim. So with the following pictures plus a couple more, my French Country chalk paint experiment made its way to kijiji.

A week or so later, my table was sold! It was quite a great experience - buying and selling with a big of profit involved. May have to try it again sometime! I enjoyed the painting process - find it somewhat relaxing, in fact - and in the end, it was probably good that it went right back out the door. Otherwise it would've launched other tweaks in the dining room to match the style! (yes, that was an audible sigh of relief you heard from my husband's direction! ;) 

Next chalk paint project lined up: The coffee table in our shed.

Linking to Jennifer Rizzo's Fabulously Creative Friday