Living in New England means being grateful for any day that is above 65 degrees in the springtime. We have had a warmer spring than usual this year in Massachusetts, and I love working on projects outside, so you can imagine how excited I was when a client asked me to give this vertical chest a makeover.
The piece has a light and airy, almost summery feel to it. When my client asked me to paint it an antique white, I loved how complimentary that color would be to the piece! Since my client was going for a matte look, I decided to go with chalk paint and offered some whites that are in the Jolie Paints line. We finally settled on Palace White.
I couldn’t wait to get started, and once I did, my first step was a deep clean using soap and water. It is so crazy how much gunk comes off a piece during this step - so important to not skip it!
After it was squeaky clean, I started sanding the vertical chest with my sander. I sanded the outside detailing and inside of the drawers by hand since I didn’t want to ruin the detailing, and my sander didn’t fit in the drawers. I started with 120 grit and then went up to a 200+ grit to smooth it out. After a good wipe down I was ready to paint.
I primed the piece with BIN primer because I was painting the piece SO white and didn’t want any potential bleed through. After one coat of the BIN primer, I moved onto the Jolie paint in Palace White. Believe it or not, this piece required almost an entire quart of paint! I use water while working with chalk paint too, which thins it out, and I ended up needing three coats of paint for the white to really settle. I used spray paint for the inside of the chest because I didn’t want the inside to be brown and the outside to be white. All about those details!
I hand-painted the rest of the piece, including the drawers:
I used a couple of methods to seal this piece. On the body of the piece, I used spray sealant by Rust-Oleum and on the drawers I used Jolie’s Clear Wax. I did it this way because it would have been really tricky (and time consuming) to wax the side detailing:
I love how polished wax makes the finish look, so wanted the drawers finished in wax for that undeniable glow:
This was a quick and easy piece! I felt like spring really sprung with this one, and I staged it as such with some fresh lilacs in a blue vase for a pop of color. Simple but perfect for the easiness of this piece.
Do you have any fun spring/summer projects coming up? I would love to hear about them below!
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