Chalk paint and drawers

We got a little over excited when we went to the thrift store recently.  We were in need of a dresser or a chest of drawers and were planning an Ikea trip, but at 3hr each way to Chicago, this was no easy feat.  Plus the lovely IKEA hemnes drawers that I loved were completely out of our price range..

Inspiration! IKEA Hemnes drawers

So when we went to habitat-restore and discovered that they sold solid wood chests of drawers for under $50, my mind filled with all the ways we could decorate them!  Admittedly the initial chest wasn’t too pretty, especially as the top veneer had been chipped away and coffee stained

Similar chest of drawers to the one we bought – I forgot to take a photo of the exact ones

So we decided to give it a paint job.    First job was to give it a quick sand and to use polyfiller/spacking to fill in the drawer knob holes.

Our trusty primer

Hard at work

We wanted to keep the insides of the drawers as wood, so most of our time was spend covering the insides with plastic bags. As always the actual priming took seconds…

The wood grain inside the drawers was much prettier than the walnut veneer on the outside

Priming done!

Someone had recommended using chalk paint, which seemed easy enough after reading this fantastic blog post:

In My Own Style – Testing 1… 2…. 3…. versions of chalk paint 

This is the rough recipe we ended up using:

1 – Mix plaster of paris with water, slowly adding the water until the mix had the consistency of single cream, or paint

2 – Mix 1 part of this with about 2 parts of paint.  Importantly, do not choose paint with primer or the mix will harden!

We chose Valspar contractor grade 2000 paint from Lowes and had it tinted Hematite.  We had left over chalk paint in the end, which was still liquid 1 month later, so not including primer seemed to work.

Hematite lowes paint, courtesy of http://www.thehappyhomebodies.com/2013/07/diy-front-door-makeover.html

Painting was super easy – the paint went on smoothly and dried smoothly.  It was also incredibly easy to clean the paintbrushes  We gave it three coats in the end, but only because we kept painting late in the evening on the porch and kept missing bits in the low light!

Here’s the final painted result… although it doesn’t quite look like it in the photo, the colour matched almost exactly with the swatch.

You’ll have to wait until the next post for the detailing and the big reveal!

Xx