Distressing furniture

I recently attended a workshop on how to distress furniture using chalk paint that we made.  Every attendee brought a piece of furniture to be distressed.  I knew nothing about how to distress furniture prior to the workshop and in fact, have never really liked the look that much.

After the workshop, however, I was hooked.  All the pieces looked really good and the process itself was pretty easy.  What I liked most is that we didn't have to sand our pieces prior to applying the paint.

So, I bought a $10 plant stand from a consignment store to distress at home.  Something I had noticed at the workshop was that a lighter color looked better with dark wood showing through.  Since my plant stand was a dark oak, I decided to get a light blue paint.  I bought a sample jar of Behr paint from Home Depot called Hazy Skies.  We had used Valspar from Lowe's at the workshop.

In addition to the paint, what I needed for the project was:

     Plaster of paris
     Bucket
     Paint brush
     Water
     Sandpaper
     Soap
     Wax

To make the chalk paint, I poured all of the paint (7.5 fl oz) into the bucket.  I then added 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of plaster of paris to the paint and stirred it until there were no lumps.

Next, I added 2 tablespoons of water and stirred again.  I really recommend adding one tablespoon at a time just to make sure the paint doesn't get too thin.

Before I started painting my plant stand, I used soap on the edges where I wanted the paint to come off when I started distressing the piece.  This is a great tip that we learned at the workshop.  I used Ivory soap because it's what I had but I recommend using an unscented soap for this.  As you can see, I have rubbed soap on all the edges of the piece.

I then painted the plant stand in its entirety, even painting over the soap.  I actually gave the piece two coats of paint, because the first coat looked pretty light.  I could have given it another coat if I had wanted it darker.

I let it dry overnight but at the workshop we let it dry for 30 to 40 minutes.  Once it was dry, I started sanding it wherever I wanted the distressing to be.  On the edges where I had applied the soap, the paint came right off without hardly any rubbing.  But in other areas, I had to rub a lot harder to remove the paint.

The final step was to apply wax over the paint.  I used some wax polish that I had, but you can use Briwax or Minwax.  The purpose of the wax is to harden the paint.

I want to add a different top to the plant stand but for now, this is the result.