UncategorizedThe Dressing Table June 29, 2011I posted before shots of this dressing table a week ago: I’ve been working on this off and on for the last week and it has become a much more difficult project than I had anticipated. I wanted a nice clean white finish (even though I’m normally drawn to much more rustic pieces). I thought I would just sand it down, spray it with primer, spray a few coats of white, polyurethane it and be done. Not so much… I did hit it pretty good with a palm sander first. As you can probably see from this picture, the piece was pretty rough. There was paint peeling off in a lot of places, so it ended up taking more sanding than I had originally thought. As I said, I pictured this having a clean, white finish, so that meant no peeling paint underneath. After a while of sanding it down, I cleaned it and began spraying. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. I’ve read a lot of blogs where they use spray paint to finish furniture and I am OBSESSED with spray paint, so I liked that idea. After one coat of primer and like five or six coats of spray paint, I really wasn’t happy with the result. The piece was just too damaged to begin with to get a smooth finish as I’d pictured. The flat surfaces were smooth, but lots of angles and details looked more worn under the paint. But, wouldn’t you believe it, I realized I loved that look! I liked where it was uneven, where paint was peeling off. It fits my rustic style perfectly. But, the color was very stark white and looked streaky in places. It just wasn’t covering. Can you see the streaks? Especially down the sides and on the top. I know it is a little hard to tell the color in the picture, but in person, it was almost blue it was so white. Not quite what I’d pictured. You can really see the streaks in that picture. So, what to do? I thought about just getting a warmer color of spray paint and continuing on, but wasn’t really happy with that. Then, I remembered that we had a cream color paint left over from another project. It looks almost yellow compared to the color it was painted. That’s not what I wanted either. But, I decided that just using a little of this could warm it up a good bit. I’ve heard so much about dry brushing, but I’d never tried it. My husband reminded me that we a dry brush (a.k.a oil based brush that we forgot to wash paint out of so it’s now hard). And I decided to give it a try. I started dry brushing the paint on and knew immediately this was a good move! It definitely warmed it up, but didn’t make it yellow at all. I wasn’t using enough paint for that. And, dry brushing gives such a cool, streaky texture that looks worn and rustic instead of looking bad. Here are the drawer fronts. The one on the left has been dry brushed and the one on the right is just with bright white spray paint. I know it’s hard to tell from the picture, but in person, the dry brushed looks a lot warmer. I really like the color better and it fixed my coverage problems. Here are some shots of the table after dry brushing: I know the difference may be hard to see in these photos because it’s white, but take my word for it, it is so much better! Now, I just have to refinish the mirror and the stool and polyurethane. I think I will sand this down a little and rough up the edges a bit. I can’t wait to have it in the room! I’ll have finished pictures of it as soon as I can.
Kristina says June 29, 2011 at 9:37 pm I love it! You did a great job! What is dry brushing? You should do a post on it! Reply