This week’s before & after comes to us from Liz, an Arlington gal who fell in love with Chalk Paint® after moving houses and looking for a way to refresh her furniture. Liz’s love for old furniture began  at age ten while working at estate sales with her mom and inspires each of her transformations!

Liz started out with this Pottery Barn piece she had bought, which was super functional for her, but the espresso finish felt tired and didn’t match the new low boy modern dresser she purchased. Being the DIYer she is, she decided to use Chalk Paint to transform her piece and tie the two styles of furniture together.

Her first step was to grab a couple sample boards and play around until she got her desired finish.

After experimenting a bit, Liz landed on using French Linen as her base color and decided to use some Milk Paint she already had to do a wash over top. (You could also use Graphite for a similar look!)

Liz took out her drawers before painting the base coat of her Lingerie chest in French Linen, which took about two coats to accomplish.

As you can see, the French Linen pulled the base tones out of the wood beautifully, but didn’t quite match the look. So liz moved on to doing her color wash. 

As you can see, this added a little extra dimension to the piece and pulled out the dark tones of the grain on the modern piece she was looking to match. Liz isn’t a huge fan of the process of waxing, so she opted to use a water-based Polyurethane top coat in a matte finish for a similar look to wax. If you love the wax like us though, using black wax over clear wax can also help to achieve the look of this wash!

What transformations have you made recently? We want to see!!! Send them to us so we can feature your work too! In the mean time, head over to our Etsy page to check out some of our transformations and then grab your supplies in store or online.