Makeover Monday–Spectral Paint

 

Today I will be showing you before and after pictures of two pieces of furniture I painted for people recently using Spectral colored paint. I cannot keep enough of this paint on hand! Some may say white is white, but with all these years of painting I have discovered that it’s not. There are many different shades of white. Spectral is a nice gray/white color. It has so little gray in it that you may not be able to see it without holding a stark gray color beside it. It is presently one of my favorite colors.

I redid a hutch and chest recently using Spectral colored paint. Here are the before and after shots..

It is difficult to see the exact shade of white in a picture, but at least you can see it received a major transformation. The inside is painted with a dark gray paint that I’m not sure of the name anymore.

 

The owners want to change the hardware yet, so that will add a nice, modern farmhouse look.

I used my sprayer to apply the paint and since there is a primer in the paint already, I didn’t apply one separately. With a lot of old pieces of furniture like this, I ran into old stains creeping through the paint. To solve this, I started using gray Rustoleum spray paint primer. It works great, giving it a light coat that will blend in perfectly with the paint I apply using my sprayer. I only applied this spray paint where the stain came through, not over the whole piece. After it was dry, I them resumed spraying the white water base paint over it.

After the paint was nice and dry, I distressed the edges and gave the piece a coat of Polycrylic, using my sprayer. I am a strong believer in using Polycrylic to protect the painted finish on most pieces of furniture. I always buy Minwax’s Polycrylic, but there may be other brands out there that would work too.

 

Here is the other piece I did at the same time..

The only prep work I did on both these pieces was going over them with Krud Kutter, a deglossing/cleaning product. (I love this stuff) At times I will sand a bit too, but for these pieces it wasn’t necessary.

For this chest, I didn’t want the grooves to get any paint, so I rolled up masking tape and stuck it into the cracks before painting.

After a few coats of Spectral paint..

After the paint was dry, I distressed the edges and gave the whole piece a coat of Annie Sloan wax.

I believe the owner is planning on adding a cushion seat, which will look great. For me, I’d probably either paint the hardware or get new ones, though it looks better than I expected with the brass too. I love the look of the fake drawers and am planning on incorporating that idea into a piece of furniture eventually. :)

I hope you enjoyed this Monday makeover and are inspired to redo old, unwanted pieces of furniture. It’s truly amazing what paint can do!

Have a great week!

-Mary