Country Grey Oak Table Transformation

I have read where Annie Sloan Chalk Paint is known as a "girl's paint." I can attest that it truly is the "working girl's paint." Maintaining a full-time job whether it's in the office or in your "home" office, finding the time to do your picking and tending to your family is not always easy. Albeit I have several four-legged children (not the two-legged fussy kind) it's sometimes more than this Shabby Chica can manage. That's when I turn to Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to lose myself in the wonderful world of color. With the wand of my paintbrush, I can turn an ugly duckling into the belle of the ball in as quick as 1 day!  And the best part is...wait for it...I can do it inside the house when the husband is out of town for a couple of days and he will never know!  (Uh oh, hope he doesn't read this blog. Oh, well. I'll worry about that tomorrow.)

Here's a picture of  a cute little oak table I picked about a month ago for $20. I love the legs on this.

I had wanted to try Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Country Grey and thought this piece would be perfect for it. I started this project Friday evening about 7:00 p.m. I painted one coat on and in about one hour it was very dry and I put the second coat on. I had started another project during the hour--pics of that project will be coming soon. The chalk paint is not messy to use and if you do have an oops, it is super easy to clean up. 

 I took this picture at about 9:30 p.m. on Friday. The second coat was still drying and the color is actually a darker than what appears to be in this picture. Country grey seems like a light khaki to me. I had to work on Saturday during the day so I put the first coat of Annie Sloan Clear Wax on when I got home which was about 6:30 p.m. After about an hour I buffed the wax and then did a light distressing with sandpaper. I used a moist paper towel to absorb the small amount of dust from the sanding I was doing inside house! This worked very well. I then reapplied Clear Wax on the top of the table and the distressed areas. I have found that using white sheets to buff works very well for me. Other cloths used such as old t-shirts, rags and even a buffing pad on my sander did not work out so well. It seemed that I would always see little particles on the finished product. So far, the sheets are particle free and leave a nice smooth finish.

I was able to get the table to the shop first thing Sunday morning. I would estimate the total time on this project to be about 5 hours! It used to take me two weekends to finish a project. One weekend to sand, prime and prep and the second to paint and wax. With Annie Sloan Chalk Paint I have been able to cut that time down drastically. What will your next (or first) Annie Sloan project be?

--The Shabby Chicas