Sweet Cotton-Candy-Colored Dreams

Before we closed on the Modage, we knew that we wanted to use my old bedroom set in the guest room. We also knew we would use my old, awesome, totally retro, aqua satin bedding. We also knew that one of the dressers was badly chipped, making the veneer a pain in the tush to refinish in a wood tone. We decided we would paint the whole set coral, which led to the grey paint on the wall. Have to ground the crazy colors somehow.

Having read about the wonders of chalk paint, I decided to mix up my own for this project.

Step 1:

Pull all of the drawers from their frames and spread around the garage. Question your own sanity. Feel mildly overwhelmed.  Fill any chips, wait for chips to dry, and then sand filler.

Step 2:

Mix cheaper homemade chalk paint up in the plastic container you purchased at the hardware store. Question the choice of color that you purchased, start wondering if the Fella was right about going a shade darker. Convince yourself that you were right and the Fella was obviously insane. Look at the paint again, convince yourself harder.

Recipe:
1 quart of paint
1 cup of plaster of Paris
1/2 cup of warm water

Mix the water and plaster together, breaking up clumps. Mix plaster paste with paint in plastic container, preferably with lid. Presto! Chalk Paint for a fraction of the cost Annie Whats-Her-Butt charges.

Step 3:

Paint first coat onto furniture. Curse the Barbieishness of it all. Sheepishly admit to the Fella that he was probably right. Thank Fella for returning to the hardware store to buy another quart of paint in his suggested color. Sand off any clumps (very gently) after the paint dries.

Step 4:
Mix new paint with more plaster, warm water, and the remains of batch one. Bask in the awe of the perfection of the color. Don’t let Fella catch you basking.  Apply second coat with renewed glee.

Step 5:

Seriously…this stuff needs a coat three? It does if you don’t want everything to look distressed. How distressing. Rue the day you decided to undertake this project. Rejoice after completing the last drawer; realize that you still have to do two coats of poly.  Curse the poly.

Step 6:

Apply two coats of water based poly to your furniture. Bask in its beauty. Realize that you probably should have labeled the drawers before you started.

Step 7:
Carry in the furniture after it has dried. Start putting in drawers. Swap them out fourteen times until you get the proper configuration; don’t forget to cuss the whole time.

Step 8:
Accessorize and recognize that all the effort was worth it.