Sometimes the world looks grey and brown.
Sometimes I just feel like my eyes are going to fall out of my head if I don’t see a luscious pop of color. We lived in Canada for seven years and while we loved every bit of it, the whites and browns of winter had my eyes aching for the greens and color explosions of Spring and Summer.
I recently felt much the same way as I stood in my living room and beheld the depressing array of browns that were represented. I needed color!
Unfortunately I don’t have the money to go and buy a whole new set of furniture with enough color to make my soul sing when I survey my living room. Sigh.
But I do have enough money for a can of paint!
My end tables were the best candidates for this inexpensive color makeover.
If I had to describe these end tables in three words, here is what I would say: brown, cheap, ugly. Oh and dusty. But that’s four words and that is not really a feature of the tables themselves but rather a feature of someone who has a dog and two cats and apparently wants bunnies too. Dust bunnies. But I digress.
Goodbye Brown Town! Hello Yellow!
For this project I used a new kind of paint that I had never used before. I’d read great reviews about it so I decided to give it a go and I’m really happy with the results both in color and in texture.
It’s called Milk Paint. And just look at it. Creamy and silky and… well, milky. Buttermilk Yellow by General Finishes.
Now I mentioned above that these tables are cheap. El Cheapo. And I mean it. Chips and dings and all that. Fortunately the look that I’ve been pursuing has been an imperfect one. Many call it “shabby chic” but I’m just going to call it colorful eclectic. Yup. Made that up myself (I’m creative like that).
I brought my tables out into a well-ventilated area and started to prepare them for receiving paint. Dusted them. Sanded them and then wiped them down once more. I just used a piece of 150 grit sandpaper and gave each piece a mild sanding. If I was working on a more expensive piece or a piece with more old finish to remove I’d have used my electric sander but I just did this by hand.
Then I used a regular old paint brush and went to town painting.
Because milk paint is thin and because I was painting over a dark surface that still had a little bit of shine on it, these tables took about 3 or 4 coats. But of the many awesome properties of milk paint, one is how quickly it dries. Whereas some tackier paints will take hours, if not a whole day to fully dry, milk paint dries within 10 to 15 minutes in the right conditions. Seeing as I was outdoors painting these and there was a slight breeze, they dried in record time so I was able to finish all three tables in a matter of about two hours.
I love how they turned out. The finish has a very mild shine. Just the perfect balance between matte and gloss.
My world is now colorized!
How happy my eyes are now.
So grab your garage sale find or worn out piece of furniture and give it a new lease on life for the price of a can of paint and a piece of sandpaper. Your eyes will thank you!
