Ending Procrastination With the Help of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

     My daughter’s room has always been the space for expressing my inner Lilly girl.  While the Hub has very traditional ideas about the rest of our home, he has given me carte blanche in our girl’s room.  As I did as a teenager in my own room, I live my designer fantasies by constantly rearranging her space, and she rarely seems to mind.

     While I love to try new furniture arrangements, painting her furniture even when it is absolutely necessary has always stymied me.  As a result, she still has a desk that is too ugly to even show here.  The desk needs so much TLC that I have procrastinated in doing anything to it for more years than I care to admit.  As we were preparing for her to head off to college last summer, I resolved to finally get that desk painted in conjunction with having the new Lilly Pulitzer curtains made.  Well, she comes home from college for the summer in a couple of weeks, and I still haven’t done anything with that desk.

     One of my favorite bloggers, Centsational Girl,  is always refurbishing thrift store finds with a can of paint and a paint brush.  Often she uses Zinsser primer, but she has let her avid readers like this Avad Fan in on a little secret:  not all paint requires a primer base, specifically Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint.  Kate, the woman behind Centsational Girl, has used this chalk paint several times over the past year, and her sensational results have convinced me to try it.

     Because Annie Sloan is based in Oxford, England, finding her chalk paint in the States is not always easy.  The closest and as far as I can tell only distributor in Virginia is the fabulous French design store, Brocante Home, located in of all places Irvington, Virginia.  Fortunately, I have some friends with homes at the Rivah so was able to combine my shopping trips with a couple of girls weekends this winter.

     Having done a bit of research in advance, I had my shopping list ready and am now own an assortment of Annie Sloan products.

I have done two quick and relatively easy paint jobs since acquiring these paints.  First up was an old pair of painted wood chairs that my friend J and I reclaimed in a day in a combination of Greek Blue, Louis Blue and Pure White for her Rivah kitchen.  So sorry that I didn’t get pictures of those.

     Second was a rewhitening of this chest that had a blue stencil on the drawers from the days in my daughter’s nursery.  Again, no before picture.  Even with sanding down the stencil, I still had to paint the drawer fronts three times to keep the stencil from showing through the Pure White.  I changed out the handles on this chest to some favorite old MacKenzie-Childs knobs, which required drilling new screw holes and filling in the old ones.  That part of the project worked out well, and you can’t see the old nail holes.

     While the paint goes on easily, I still have not perfected the wax technique that provides the finishing touch and keeps the paint from getting scuffed up.  Maybe it is just that the wax takes some time to set.  Despite my wax issues, the forgiving soft finish of the chalk paint makes so much sense for imperfect furniture like my daughter’s desk.  I have yet to try the distressing techniques that Annie Sloan and Brocante Home advocate, and, as I like a clean look to complement the Lilly Pulitzer style of this room, I will probably wait to try distressing in another part of the house.

     Now that you know my plan, I have to execute it or answer to you.  So no more procrastination.  Stay tuned for pictures of a new and improved desk in the next two weeks.

Photos by Avad Fan.