So picking up from my last post, I talked about a hutch that I was refurbishing.  Originally, this hutch was found next to our friends’ dumpster and they offered it to us!  So we drove the truck aaallll the way out to “West County” 🙂  and took it off their hands.  Like many things in our life, Nathaniel and I saw so much potential in the little piece and wanted to bring it back to it’s original glory.  Here’s its lonesome self sitting next to the dumpster.

The first thing I had to do was sand it all down.  I got it pretty smooth, but I wasn’t stressing about it being perfect because I knew I was going to distress it later anyway.

 
Once I got the roughness out, I decided to paint the back inside red.  I then proceeded to mix up my own version of chalk paint!  If you buy pre-made chalk paint in the store, it runs about 40 bucks for a quart (which is kind of expensive especially if you have a big piece of furniture).  Here are my ingredients that I got from the Lowe’s website:

1.  Flat Paint

2. Plaster of Paris

3. Water

That’s it!  The recipe called for 1 cup of paint, 1/3 cup of Plaster of Paris, and 1/3 cup of water.  I decided to double that though because this was a pretty big piece.  It actually worked out perfect!

Mix the paint in and you’re done!

It should be kind of creamy and chalky all at the same time.  It was pretty easy to apply, it took about 2 coats of paint to cover the whole thing and for me the best part about the chalk paint is that it doesn’t have to be perfect because you’re just going to rough it up a little later.

Here’s the hutch all painted.

Next step was to distress.  I just used some medium grit sandpaper and attached it to a piece of word for stability.  I kind of just used my “artistic” sense and sanded where I thought it would look cool.  A little here, a little there is my motto.  The cool thing about chalk paint is when you sand it, it leaves a smooth finished look, unlike latex where a whole layer peels off.

The last step is to polish it with a white rag.  Just a little rub takes the roughness away and gives it a smooth feel and shine.

The end result turned out better than I ever imagined!  I might be biased, but I think I could probably sell this thing for 150 bucks!  hehe Maybe not, but it was a pretty fun project that really adds some character to our kitchen.  I’ll be doing the same process for the bathroom counter we bought for $10 soon.

End result!