I really love this project, so much I thought I would talk a little more about it today. I covered it in this post about our porch makeover, but here are ALL the details if you are interested.
I found this chest at a local thrift/consignment store. I don’t have a good picture of it in the true ‘before’ stage {bad blogger!} but just imagine that it had bumper stickers all over the sides and you’ll get the idea. The price was right {it was cheap!} so I brought it home to fix-up, figuring I could sell it along with the other items we’ve been working on.
Here it is once I got it home in my ‘dining-room-turned-painting-studio’.
I started by giving it a very good cleaning. I always use a water and white vinegar mixture to get rid of that “thrift” store smell, then I left it outside in the sun (with it wide open) for a few hours. The sunlight always does the trick and the lovely odor you can expect with pieces like this will typically disappear.
I then spent some time removing the bumper stickers. Once I pulled off the stickers, I was left with the residual glue backing. I took care of this with some homemade “Goo Gone”, which is just a mix of vegetable oil and baking soda, and it worked perfectly. The last step was just a light sand all over. Once it was all prepped, I gave it a good coat of Annie Sloan Paris Grey. Then topped it with another coat of paint, this time with a wet brush to thin the paint so the piece would retain some of its original character and grain. After the paint was dry, I distressed it with sand paper in the places I wanted it to show ‘wear’.
I also painted the inside, something I don’t usually do with furniture, but with this chest it made it feel so fresh and clean. I used some ASCP in Pure White, and then lined the bottom with some burlap. Since I store pillows and blankets in there for our porch, I can always pull out the burlap–its just attached on the corners with velcro dots– and give it a wash, need be!
Since I knew the top of the chest would get a lot of use and need to be durable to drinks and such, rather then using a wax, I gave a American Paint Company’s Clear Top Coat a try. It paints right on and was SO easy to use. I had purchased it to use for the table top on my new dining room set, since I had heard the traditional waxes designed for chalk paint aren’t quite as durable, so we’ll see how it goes when I get around to that project. So far on this project the top coat has been a great success. It has a nice shine and spills have wiped right off.
The final step was adding the stencil. I ordered the stencil HERE. I just used regular white craft paint. I think it makes it SO much more interesting then it would be as just a gray painted trunk, don’t you?
As I said, I didn’t intend originally to put it on my porch [see the whole space HERE} but it works out there perfectly. The added storage is just what we need, so I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.
That should answer all the questions, but let me know if I missed anything.
Thanks for stopping by!
Nice work! I have a similar chest in our garage just collecting dust maybe I should do something similar with it since we need some space in our master bedroom for all of those blankets and pillows we have. Great post!
You should paint it! Let us know how it turns out…We’d love to see it! Thanks 🙂
Amy