My friend
Cherry's in the Garden and fellow blogger has been busy busy painting everything in site--but her husband. :) See she discovered this paint, Annie Sloan paint, and has been a painting fool ever since. Cherry has turned some so so pieces of furniture into some real knock outs--so I finally took the plunge and went over to the
Southern Institute of Faux Finishing website, whipped the plastic out and bought myself some. When my box arrived in the mail I eagerly set to work.
Me and hubby put in a lot of time working on our landscaping and I can't think of a better way to enjoy our efforts than viewing our garden from the front porch and rocking in our newly painted rockers. Grab a glass of iced tea and I'll walk you through this project.
Our front porch needs updating and I've been eyeing rockers for sometime--a decade at least--to replace our sad looking old wicker chairs. The problem was money of course, I liked the ones from Cracker Barrel, but 4 chairs easily would have put us out $500. plus. Then you have Pottery Barn and their gorgeous Salem Rocking Chair which costs $349. each--without cushion--insane! Of course they are made of solid mahogany, but I assure you, my painted bargains will be around for me to rock grandbabies in and that is a long way coming folks.
1. First find some old rockers, mine are from the 1970s and 1980s, The one on the left was from my father-in-laws home and the one on the right is a hand me down I've had since 1984. I searched my local Craiglist for the fourth, they averaged around $40 - $100. Since there was no dire need to have them all at once, I kept searching Craigslist daily and snagged one for $15! Look at garage sales and second hand stores too.
3. I'm going the traditional route and painting all of them black, but wouldn't it be fun to have each a different color? Open up a can of Annie Sloan Chalk paint and paint away, no need to sand with this paint, all you need is a clean surface. Before I discovered this paint I had sanded one of the rockers, (it's not shown in this picture, because it is in pieces waiting for hubby to assist me in repairing some of the rails) the process of sanding took hours, with Annie Sloan Chalk paint forget the sanding, this paint binds well without all that extra work. Did I mention that I went through 8 sandpaper sheets for my hand sander?
4. There are 2 steps to achieve a black finish: first you paint with the graphite chalk paint, using a 2 inch paint brush (you can purchase from your local big box store). The graphite paint reminds me of battleship gray. but don't worry, we will get to black by applying the dark wax.
5. Here is the rocker completely painted with graphite paint.
6. To achieve a black finish you apply Annie Sloane Soft Wax in dark. I purchased the ultimate waxing brush because I believe in using good tools, when painting, those tools are brushes. The waxing brush did a good job in applying the wax. One caveat, work in the shade or inside, I was in the sun and the wax melted to liquid, you want the wax to be the consistency of margarine...not oil.
7. A picture of the product and the ultimate waxing brush.
8. Two down, two to go. Don't they look inviting? Come on over, sit a spell. Can I get you some more iced tea?
Linky Parties:
. I've just completed waxing the second rocker, when my hand on its own accord loads the brush with more wax and applies it to my faded painted concrete urn. Amazing! The after picture speaks for itself!
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