Painted Credenza....and a Milk Can

Today I'm sharing my second attempt at painting furniture with chalk paint.  I thought I would share my before and after photos and also a few lessons I learned along the way.  First, the fun stuff....
before

 Pretty awesome, right?  Okay, not so much.
after

Just a little better.  I really liked the detail of the cabinet, just not the wood tone.  Same with the hardware, I liked the detail, but not the finish.

I got out some black homemade chalk paint that I had made earlier and stirred it up.  Lesson number one learned- homemade chalk paint is awesome but it can't be stored.  So only mix up what you are going to use right then.  All the plaster of paris settles out to the bottom and when you stir it up you get a bunch of chunks in your paint.  Lesson number two-if you do end up with paint like this, don't go ahead and put a coat on.  I did because I didn't want to go get more paint, thinking it would somehow be okay.  It was not.  So I had to sand off all those little bumps (not fun!) and go get more paint.  Lesson number three-not all black paint is black paint apparently.  The second black paint came from a different store and as soon as I opened it I wasn't in love with the tone.  But I went ahead and put it on, thinking that it would dry to the tone I wanted.  It got a little better as it dried, but it wasn't quite what I wanted.  Oh well, it was painted, and it really didn't look bad, so I spray painted the hardware, put on a coat of wax, put the hardware back on, and called it good.

Love that detail now!
I really didn't want to throw away all of the first paint that I had mixed up (the lumpy stuff) and I had a milk can that I was planning on painting.  I decided the gritty of the paint would actually look good on the milk can since I was going for that primitive look.

It worked.  I made a stencil out of newspaper and spray painted the star on, then touched up around it.
Both of these pieces are now for sale at our booth at the Factory.