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Furniture Painting Techniques: A Little Glaze Goes a Long Way
By Alchemy Fine Living on May 22, 2012
My mom and I are always searching for and exploring new furniture painting techniques. Using glaze to give painted furniture an old world, authentic, aged look is one of our most recent discoveries. This table was painted, distressed, glazed, and then waxed all in one day. My mom created this gorgeous look with two different colors of paint and really made it pop with a dark glaze.
The first thing she did, well technically the third since it was cleaned first and sanded second, was paint the entire table with a beautiful pale green. As usual, we are using Valspar paint from Lowe’s. We both love Valspar. It goes on smooth, gets great coverage, and the price point is so good. (I’m not sponsored by Lowes. That sure would be awesome though.) Anyways, enough about the type of paint. The green was painted on with a synthetic bristle brush and allowed about 30 minutes to dry. It was a hot day today, so things were drying very quickly.
The first coat just needs to be dry to the touch to move on to the next step, which is to hand paint white accents. My mom used a small artists brush to get into the details on the legs and a one inch artists brush to paint the edge around the top of the table. She used Swiss coffee, again a Valspar paint. Both the green and the white are satin finish paints.
After about another thirty minutes had passed and the white paint was dry to the touch it was time to distress this table. My mom used 100 grit sand paper to rough up the edges of the table top and all around the decorative legs.
Next she used a clean rag to apply a thin layer of a glaze mixture all over the piece. A brush is used to get the glaze deep into the recessed areas on the legs. She used clear glaze and added black paint to it. The great thing about clear glaze is that you can make it any color you want. We also like to mix it with burnt umber for a great antiqued look. There is really no specific ratio for mixing the paint color with the clear glaze. We just mix it and play with it until we achieve the desired look.
The final step was to wax the table with Howard’s Feed-N-Wax. My mom and I love using this wax on most of our painted furniture. It is so easy to rub on and then simply buff off. It leaves a pretty luster and provides a nice layer of protection on fresh paint. We’ve tried using paste wax before and had a heck of a time with it. This wax requires far less elbow grease, it’s much easier to work worth.
So here is the finished table! Isn’t it pretty?? I think my mom did a fabulous job on this one.
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