About six years ago, I bought a piece of furniture on Craigslist after seeing my sister-in-law’s beautiful new home in the country.

Side note: Her husband built the house with his bare hands! Well, and a few independent contractors, but I gotta give it to my brother-in-law; you can give him a piece of wood and a few tools and he can turn it into something amazing.  He’s building boats now.  Yes, boats.  His talent is super inspiring.

Now, hold on!  I didn’t say I was going to build houses or boats.  After all, this post is about my first foray into the world of refinishing furniture.  My sister-in-law has this buffet cabinet with an attached hutch that fits in perfectly with her modern country decor.  I’ve been seeing all kinds of posts on Pinterest about chalk paint, Ikea hacks, and turning furniture from thrift stores into amazing conversation pieces.  After reading a few posts, I thought…Hey!  I can totally do this myself.  And, being the “all in” gal that I am, I did just that.

My inspired piece of furniture was in a warehouse (in a not-so-nice area of town), and I snagged it for $50!  It sat unfinished in our old house because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it.  When we moved a few weeks ago into our new house, the piece just didn’t work anymore.  Not only was it too small for the dining room, it didn’t match anything in our house.  Here’s some photos of it before:

It has cabinet doors as well, but I had already removed them at the time of the photo – oops!  I used Heirloom Traditions Chalk Paint in the color “Twilight” and a regular 2 inch natural paint brush from the hardware store.  Most of what I’ve read regarding chalk paint boasts that chalk paint does not need an initial primer coat, so I just went for it!  Some tips for all you furniture painting virgins out there:

1.  Wipe down your furniture with a soft cloth to remove surface dirt before painting.

2. Brush in the direction of the wood grain.

3. Let the first coat dry for about 30 – 45 minutes before applying a second coat.  (I did not use a primer, and it took about 30-45 minutes to get from one end of the piece to the next, so I started with my second coat immediately after finishing the first coat.)

After the paint was completely finished, I took some rough bristle brushes and scraped some of the paint off the edges.  I wasn’t too careful here, but I also didn’t want to overdo it, so I made 3-5 distress strokes and took a step back to look at the full piece of furniture.  I repeated this process until I was satisfied.

I let the piece sit overnight to make sure it was completely dry.  Then I applied a full coat of clear wax from Hobby Lobby (much cheaper than the wax sold with the chalk paint but also doesn’t have any tint to it).  This gave it that finished, slightly glossy look.  The more wax added, the glossier the furniture would become.  I didn’t want a lacquered look, so I only applied one very generous coat and let it dry for about half a day.

I purchased new knobs for the cabinets and drawers from Hobby Lobby as well, and I installed these once I was confident the wax had enough time to dry.  You can find the ones for the cabinets here and the ones for the drawers here. The old cabinet hinges were sprayed with some spray paint I call “dirty silver” because it looks a little like silver when it’s first begun to tarnish.  You can find this color in the craft store by the oil rubbed bronze paint and the regular silver metallic spray.  The only thing I’m missing now are latches for the cabinets at the bottom, but I’ll get there.  I think it came out pretty great!  What do you think of my first big project?

Till Next Time Ya’ll!