I’ve told everyone about my love of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint once before with my antique piece that I completed over the holidays, here. Well I got another wild hair and decided to take over our Master Bedroom this past weekend. We purchased a new bed over a year ago and since that day, I’ve been staring at the rest of our furniture wondering what to do. Biggest problem: It doesn’t exactly “go”. Here is a pic of our bed, which we got from PotteryBarn in the color, “Metal Gray”. If you like it and you want one too, you can find it, here.

Potterybarn Raleigh Upholstered Bed

See the problem with having a gray bed is that our brown furniture didn’t look that great with it. I mean it looked okay, I guess, but it wasn’t what I envisioned for the vibe of our room. I looked into buying new pieces, but honestly there was nothing wrong with our dresser and nightstands and I never found anything that went with the bed any better than what we have. The furniture isn’t very old, it has a gorgeous marble top, and overall, all of the pieces are still in terrific condition! They just don’t really match. So what’s a bored mom on the weekend to do?

Well, I made a quick trip to Round Rock and visited Weathered Cottage in hopes to find the owner, Meghan. She wasn’t there that day, but her husband, the next best thing fortunately was. If you decide after today you want to try some Annie Sloan paint out, I HIGHLY recommend you go pay Weathered Cottage a visit. They are 1 of 2 retailers of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Austin and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a bind {too much wax, not enough wax, almost ruined pieces} and Meghan has come to the rescue.

I went back and forth on my color choice… I wanted something that would go with the bed, but that wasn’t matchy matchy. I wanted something darker, but not brown. I didn’t want a bold color, because I figured I’d grow tired of that. And I wanted something that looked professional. With a bit of my brother in law’s assistance, I came up with Graphite. Quarts of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint run $40. I know I know I know… it seems like a lot for a quart of paint, but if you don’t know a lot about ASCP just know it’s THE best and no other paint holds a candle to this brand. Just Google it.

As soon as I got home, I got to work! And here’s a before shot of what I was working with…

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint MakeoverThe best thing about Annie Sloan is that there is zero prep work other than dusting your piece and removing hardware.

Once I start painting, I became very nervous about my paint color choice. I certainly didn’t want to match the bed! Here’s what my piece looked like after 2 coats of the color, Graphite.

PicMonkeyNightstandDuringI already had some Annie Sloan Dark Wax as well as several Annie Sloan brushes, which is why this project only cost me $40; however, if you decide you want to Annie Sloan your entire house you will have enough Dark Wax practically for a life time! This stuff goes a long way! I decided quickly that this dark gray {graphite} wasn’t the look I was going for. I was really hoping for an “Oil Rubbed Bronze” look and this was well… gray. And practically the same color as my already gray bed. WAY TOO MUCH GRAY!

Quick Annie Sloan Tip: Graphite is probably the only Annie Sloan color that can support the look of Dark Wax all over it. If you’ve never worked with the product you won’t understand what I’m talking about, but as soon as you do or if you already have, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. This stuff is dark and difficult to work with if you’re a newbie. But with Graphite, you don’t have to be a Dark Wax expert… just start brushing it on…you’ll get the hang of it!

Here’s a picture of my piece with Dark Wax everywhere with the exception of the middle drawer so you can really see the difference. It’s subtle, but enough to take the “gray” out of it and enough to put that “Oil Rubbed Bronze” look I was going for into it. Yea! Match made in Annie Sloan heaven.

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

Honestly, the pictures don’t even do these pieces justice. I’m in love with the finished product and my bedroom furniture finally flows together and doesn’t look completely mismatched. Here’s what the final product looks like!

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

In photographs, these pieces look a lot more “solid black” than they really are. In person you can see all the detail of the Dark Wax {in a good way}, which helps the pieces look distressed without looking DIY. And since the hardware on these pieces is Oil Rubbed Bronze it’s pretty easy to see that I hit the nail on the head with this color and wax combo to achieve the look I was going for!

One of my favorite stores that I’m inspired by when it comes to DIY Annie Sloan furniture is Restoration Hardware. It’s a complete coincidence {since it was really my bro-in-law’s color choice} that my furniture came out pretty similar to what’s in stores now! See for yourself 🙂 Here are a couple of images taken from their site… color: Antique Black. Now I’m not saying this is an exact match, but if I had purchased this exact furniture it would have cost me between $2000-$3000, but by DIY’ing my already beautiful pieces, I only spent $40!

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restoration hardwarerestoration hardware

Are you an Annie Sloan Chalk Paint fan? What pieces have you DIY’d?

2 COMMENTS

  1. WOW Allison, you did a fantastic job! Thank you SO much for
    the incredibly kind words about us. I insist that we meet in person
    in the very near future! Looking forward to it ~ Meghan {your
    newest follower}.

  2. I’ve lost track of the 100s of customers I’ve begged/ordered/pleaded with to get themselves to Meghan and The Weathered Cottage and paint a piece of furniture they’ve purchased from me that has great bones but only needs a quick facelift. Megan is simply the best in the business, she’s got skills and wonderful customer service, in fact the only negative is that due to circumstances beyond her control, she had to move her store to Round Rock. City of Cedar Park loses a ton of great businesses to Round Rock due to lack of vision and foresight. Big loss for CP, big gain for RR.

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