Pretty chalk painted chest of drawers

This post may contain affiliate links, please see my full Disclaimer policy here.This was such a simple chalk-paint makeover for a cute chest of drawers! Here was the “before:”

I was in the middle of making over this little corner into an organization station, you can see it was not functioning as anything useful other than to hold my table linens and a few notepads. I had painted it in green with the black drawers for my son’s baby room, and it did look cute in there.  Now it needed something new. 

I typically use only Annie Sloan chalk paint, but I found this color called “Vintage,” by Americana Decor Chalky Finish, a beautiful robin’s egg blue , for only $8 for 8 ounces and thought I’d give it a try since I didn’t need very much to complete this project (the 8 ounces was perfect for this).  I started by removing the cool glass knobs and just giving it one coat of the Vintage. 

Then I wanted to distress it, so thought I might try selectively brushing on some of my Annie Sloan “Graphite” on the edges (I already had this color, since I use it so often).  I sanded the Graphite with sand paper, hoping for the distressed look. I’d never tried this technique before, but you never know until you try.

Here was my first mistake.  I don’t love mistakes, but I do love the process of figuring out where I went wrong! I think it was the sand paper.  It was just too rough and took off the Vintage paint as well.  Here’s what I tried to use:

What I should have used it this: a sanding sponge, a much finer grit. After I discovered that the rough grit sand paper took off too much paint, I just decided to give it another coat of Vintage, covering up the Graphite altogether. Now just a little of the graphite was showing through, which was a great look that would be enhanced with the glaze and wax.

Here you can see where it shows through:

Next, I took a little bit of Rustoleum Aged Glaze and a smallish brush, and just randomly covered over my graphite areas, as well as a few other areas on the front and top.  Now it was looking distressed.  I could have kept going with the dark wax, but kind of liked the look. 

After that, I did a very light sanding of some areas, just in the Graphite areas, and you can see it coming through  a bit. 

The beauty of Chalk Paint is that you don’t have to wait long for drying.  I coated it with AS clear wax using a regular paint brush to finish it off.

Here you can see how much I got on the brush–not too much. 

Then I just covered all the paint, you can see how it gives it depth right away. 

After about 24 hours, I just took a clean cotton rag and gave it a good buffing.  It shined up so pretty!

And here she is with some flowers from my garden!  I’m not sure where she’ll live in our house yet, but once our basement finishing is complete, I’ll put her somewhere special! Thanks for reading!