“Do Not Sell” Wet Distressed Chalky Painted Stools

I will show you how to distress a stool with chalk paint.

Whenever I am driving down the road there is a little part of my brain that is dedicated to watching for thrifty furniture finds. I love free ones the best, of course.

But today’s  wooden stools did cost me a few bucks. I think that they were well worth it since I absolutely love how they turned out with a little paint!

Those great spindly legs are the perfect shape for using two paint colors. And instead of contrasting colors I went with shades that are fairly close: a bright pink by Country Chic paint called Cherry Blossom topped with a peachy-coral shade (also by Country Chic Paint) called Sweet Dreams.

Fitting that one of these little stools ended up in our master bedroom, then, isn’t it?

Here is how these guys started out. When I first approached them outside of a local junk shop, I noticed the black marker “Do Not Sell”…. I decided not to trust what the stools were tellin’ me and I headed inside to ask about them. The junk shop got them like that. From a garage sale. With “Do Not Sell” on them. I guess at some point, someone didn’t listen to instructions, because obviously, they have been sold.

Anyhow, I sanded them down, and probably could/should have added a little stain blocking primer over top of the marker but I didn’t. I discovered later they needed an extra coat on the top to cover the black.

I gave them a base coat of bright Cherry Blossom paint by Country Chic (or two coats on the top, since I was too lazy to prime over that marker).

I let it dry and then top coated them with the beautiful peachy-coral colour by Country Chic Paint called Sweet Dreams. Isn’t is lovely? My Mom will be howling with laughter by this point in the post because in the 90’s I made fun of all her peach décor.

Tips about Wet Distressing:

Right after I had finished top coating with the peachy Sweet Dreams (and before it was dry) I immediately distressed each stool with a damp cloth. It is really easy to wet distress this way with the Country Chic Chalky-based Paints- much quicker then doing a bunch of sanding once it is all dry. I love this technique now that I have got it figured out. The trick to wet distressing is to not let the paint dry fully- to start distressing it with a damp cloth within about 1/2 an hour of painting it (sooner if it is quite warm where you are painting). Just rub off where you want your undercoat to show through…and if you do too much distressing, it is easy to add a little more of your top coat back on afterwards. So really, it is fool proof once you get the technique down.

I top coated these gorgeous gals with some of the Country Chic Gold Wax. It adds such a beautiful sheen to the paint job.

I let the wax dry on for a while and then buffed it off with a clean dry rag. All done!

 

You can see that I went pretty heavy with the distressing but I love how they turned out- seeing such a close color (instead of a glaring contrasting colour) peeking through makes the distressing more subtle. And I am pretty thrilled that I got to sneak a second pink/coral piece into our Master Bedroom… I will be back soon to share how I did the nightstands (you may remember them from the June house tour??)

 

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 I can’t wait to reveal where the second stool is going to be living!! I think you will love it…

Thanks for reading. And remember my housie friends, HOME isn’t built in a day. Enjoy the journey!

 Disclosure: I am on the Country Chic Paint Blog Squad and receive paint in exchange for tutorials on their blog, but of course all opinions and thoughts at 100% my own.

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