The JUNKtion: Florence Saves the Day

Hello! I know you kids think I fell off the face of the earth. But I didn't. Really. I've been painting away. No slacking on that part, just on the blogging part. Aaaactually, I've got exciting news which is partly to blame for my lack of blogging. I'll soon have a website. I've had the domain name for a while, but did some work in the past few months for a talented web genius who in turn is working on my new website for me. The new site should be up and running soon and the blog will then be hosted there. There will be before and after galleries, tutorials, the blog, items for sale, and much more. Be on the lookout for updates about that soon. Hopefully very soon.

Until then, I guess you're due some new do's, right? So, without further wait, here you go:

Look at this little beauty....NOT! This was a two-piece set Craigslist find. After going to the house, loading them in my car, and paying them their money, I started to doubt myself. I starting thinking...I probably shouldn't have paid $2 a piece for these things, let alone the amount I actually paid, which is more than usual for me. But they were sturdy and all the drawers worked good -- always a plus in my books.

They were painted a very nasty black paint that was super sticky to the touch. It was peeling on the top...which was in fact an ever dreaded laminate top, not the "100% real wood" which was advertised. Ugh, so here's what we had after a bit of sanding:

Since I was going to use ASCP, I didn't need to give this piece a major sanding, but I did sand it some just because I couldn't bear the thought of knowing the old, nasty, sticky paint would be underneath the pretty paint. I sanded the top down completely to the laminate and used a 60 grit paper to rough it up a bit. And behind it there are the ears of my faithful partner in crime:

I used Florence by Annie Sloan. Too bad that this color never shows up very true to color in my blog posts. The picture with the can is closer to the actual color and any of the others. This is not a blue paint, but for some reason, my pics always come out blue. It's a beautiful perfect shad of turquoise in real life.

Here's a couple pics after one thin coat...you can see it looks kinda streaky:

Oh, and here's a full shot of my faithful little assistant guarding the furniture. I just love this little guy:

Here's after two coats of paint and some distressing. I used my sander with a 220 grit paper to go over the entire piece. This is the trick to using chalk paint. It obviously feels very "chalky" once it dries, but then once sanded, it becomes silky smooth. I gave the edges a bit more sander love to obtain a distressed look. You can see in the pics below a chalky or dull look in some areas. You will get this as you sand, but once waxed it completely goes away. I always stress that this is the scary part. You will think you've messed your piece up once you start sanding, but wait until you apply the wax and you will be thoroughly pleased, I promise.

For these pieces, I used Minwax Paste Wax in Natural as my finisher. Neither of them started with all their knobs, so I combined what there was between the two in order to make enough for one. Then I used some knobs I had on hand for the other. I just metallic silver spray paint on all the knobs.