The Difference Dark Wax Makes

Hey Friends!  Hope your weekend was great. We had some cool weather here in Florida, but thankfully we had lots of sunshine to go with it.  My weekend was filled with lots of painting, more painting, and a bit more painting.  I did manage to squeeze in dinner with neighbors and friends.  Went to church this morning, and even snuck in a little nap this afternoon.  Gauge has been helping me hold down the fort.  I was able to finish up a couple of clients projects this weekend, and thought I'd share a little sneak peak.

I'm mainly showing you this to show you the difference that Annie Sloan dark wax can make on a piece.  This triple dresser is part of a 6-piece set that I'm redoing for a client.  They had originally decided to use ASCP in Provence (which is a beautiful turquoise-ish color), so we did that on two nightstands, as you'll see further in the post.  They loved that, but thought it might be a little too much on the entire set.  So, as you can see here, we kept the original color, but toned it down a bit to bring it more int the brown family instead of the yellow family.  The drawers on the left side are before I did anything, while the drawers on the right are after wax.

 Here's the entire yellow dresser before:

 I wished I had an entire after, but I sent this to my clients home before I snapped a pic, but they are going to send me one once it's all finished.  It's amazing the difference that the wax can make.  For this piece I simply brushed on Annie Sloan's dark wax.  To do this, I take a glob (yes, glob is a very professional word) of wax out of the can and put it in a paper bowl or on a paper plate.  I personally think that the wax brush is a must for this type of project.  But at $55/brush, it's a bit of investment.  Well worth it my opinion, but if you can't make the splurge, I would recommend chip brushes that you can pick up at Wal-Mart or your local hardware store.  I dip the brush in the wax glob and then use the clean portion of the plate or bowl to kinda rub it into the brush and help distribute the wax on all the bristles.  I grasp the brush with my fist and move it in strokes the direction of the grain onto the piece working it in as I go.  I work in circles where there is detailing to really get it into the crevices and highlight the details.  I use a dry clean rag/cloth to wipe off excess and blend it in.  For this particular piece I did not use clear wax before or after the dark wax, like I sometimes talk about doing.  Just a little wax goes a long way.  And as you can see in this picture makes a big difference.  I'm going to work on another piece out of this set this week and I'll try to make a video tutorial to explain what the heck I babbling on about in this post.

 Here's the nightstands that go with this set.  Done in Provence with clear and dark wax on as a sealer and for antiquing. 

 As usual, Provence never photographs for me true to color.

 This is a little closer to the real life color of these nightstands.

To be continued (with additional pieces, and hopefully a video tutorial)...