THE BIGGEST FIASCO..EVER!, A NICE PIECE OF FURNITURE NEARLY RUINED, AND A VALUABLE LESSON LEARNED...

Howdy!

The floors are finished and we finally have all the furniture back into the house, clothes have been put back in their closets and the decor has been put back in place.  Oh what a relief to finally have that HUGE project behind us...and oh how I love my new floors!!

Since we had to move all the furniture out of the house and we had to take the china cabinet apart to move it, I decided that now would be as good a time as any to give the cabinet the makeover I had been planning for it since I started the dining room redo over a year ago...you remember, right?






Anyway, I officially decided that I wanted to paint it black.

Easy enough, right?

NOT!!!

Now I don't like to be negative on this blog but you really need to know what happened...so you don't make the same mistakes I did.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across some Classic Home rich black chalk paint by Plaid in the paint isle at Wal-mart and it was only $7.97.

I picked it up because we had a couple small spots on the hardwoods to touch up before sealing. Mainly small spots where old wood filler had been used.  They did not stain over so I decided to camouflage them with the paint. It worked like a charm for that.  Since I had a ton left over I decided to go ahead and use it to paint the china cabinet.

THAT WAS A BAD IDEA!!!  This was the WORST chalk paint ever...and I do mean WORST!!!  I guess the old adage that you get what you pay for is true after all!!! Oh sure I got pretty good coverage but the finish was horribly blotchy and textured.  I guess it dried way too quickly. It left behind HORRIBLE brush and roller marks everywhere that WOULD NOT sand out. What's even worse than that is every time I would wipe the dust off, my rag would be completely black like if I was wiping the paint back off...The more I wiped the more black came off...Apparently it never really cured good either and it still would not smooth out.  What's up with that?!!  Anyway, I figured things would get better once I waxed it, so I went back to Wal-mart and bought the Classic Home brand clear wax that was there beside the chalk paint in the paint isle.

This shows white wax, I bought the CLEAR.

That was an even bigger mistake.  I applied the wax according to the directions.  It was a thick and gloppy (read messy) sort of liquid wax that took over 2 days to dry and left streaks and uneven marks all over the place that would NOT buff out.  I buffed and buffed and buffed but it NEVER got smooth and it was totally streaky too.  LOOKED HORRIBLE!

So, I went to Lowes and bought a can of Minwax paste finishing wax for $9.95 thinking that it would help me to achieve a smoother, less streaky finish.

I rubbed it on, let it dry and buffed it out and while I liked it a little better...because it was super easy to apply and only took 10 minutes to dry ..it still looked streaky. I guess I wasted my money on that idea too.

MAN OH MAN WHAT A MESS!!!!!

My china cabinet, which WAS a really nice piece of furniture, is nearly ruined.  Whaaaaa.  It's still good enough to use so it's not a total loss, but it just doesn't look quite as good or refined as I was hoping.

Needless to say the whole ordeal was the biggest fiasco I have ever been through when painting a piece of furniture. I actually broke down and cried because I ruined a nice (expensive) piece of furniture and didn't know what in the world I was going to do to fix it. As you know, once you wax you can't just simply start over by repainting. It would have to be stripped down to bare wood first and I'm just not going to go through that hassle.  It's going to have to stay the way it is.

With that, I learned a very valuable lesson and that is this...I will stick to painting ALL my furniture with satin latex paint as I always have.  You paint one to two coats of the satin paint and you are finished.  There's no painting, then waxing, then waiting, then buffing and taking three to four days to finish a piece of furniture..and there's no spending nearly $30 for all the supplies. A quart size can of satin latex paint is only around $12.  The best part about satin is that if you don't like it you can always repaint, no stripping involved.

I can say without a doubt I will NEVER use chalk paint again...unless it's my homemade kind using satin latex paint as the base...and I most certainly will NEVER use furniture wax again! It's just not worth the time, effort and frustration!!

On a more joyous note, we found an antique wrought iron bed frame for bubs room almost exactly like the one on my design board that I showed you HERE.

I will show you how it looks in his room later on when I get a few more things done in there.  I can't wait to see how everything works out.  Of course you can be sure I will share it all with you.  Until then,

Ciao,