I have been trying to stay busy during quarantine. Have yall ever felt that if yall slowed down that you’d be lost? Like, for me, I am used to working full time, trying to juggle the kids and maintaining the home. ALL of which can be overwhelming, but it keeps me busy; I like it.
While the house renovations are still in progress, we are still being gypsies staying between my in-laws and Reed’s uncle’s house. Therefore, as much as I want to decorate for the upcoming seasons, I unfortunately will not be able to 😭
To take my mind off all the negativity and uncertainty going on, I decided to redo a dresser we found during the house demo. The history of this dresser is what I love most about it. I was told that this dresser is SOLID WOOD and is at least 50 years old 😍 . It has been passed down and now it is in my possession🙌
I am used to redoing furniture with chalk paint, but I stumbled upon milk paint by one of my favorite bloggers, Jami Ray Vintage . Her channel will describe all the details of milk paint, but I will give yall a quick run down of the differences.
Chalk paint
Chalk paint has a matte, chalky finish that gives decor a rustic, distressed look. depending on your piece, you may need to sand off the shiny finish or you can just paint right over it. That is the beauty and ease of chalk paint: the lack of necessity to sand down your piece in most cases. With the look, you can distress it in certain areas to give it a more rustic, farmhouse vibe or you can just paint the entire piece and seal it. It is water based so clean up is a breeze AND it is non-toxic; always a plus. You can seal it with waxes, polyurethane, or my favorite polycrylic.
Milk paint
Milk paint as been around for centuries. It is made from milk powder, pigments, and lime. So, it is non-toxic and does not give off any harmful fumes. Similarities with chalk paint is that it does dry matte and it does not require sanding. However, to ensure a fuller coverage you have to add in “extra bond” which helps the paint adhere to multiple surfaces.
The thing that I LOVE about milk paint is its chippy feature. With chalk paint, I find it hard to achieve the chippy look. You can easily distress with chalk paint, but the chippy look adds a vintage, antique finish that I can’t get with chalk paint. I like to seal my milk paint with a wax, but there are oils out there as well.
Dresser redo process
1. Prep
The dresser is 50 years old so I would expect some grime build up. You definitely want to wipe it down with warm soap and Dawn soap. As you can tell in the pictures, the dresser has gone through about 3-4 coats of latex paint that is peeling off.
With the milk paint it said that I did not have to sand it or prep it, but I wanted to make sure I had a good canvas to work with. I applied a layer of deglosser and sanded it down with 60 grit sand paper. I know, I was rough with it, but you can tell from the pictures that it didn’t do too much for the dresser; it’s built tough.
After sanding it, I did use my handy blower tool to get the dust off and then wiped it down again to get the rest of the debris off.
2. Mixing the Milk
For this project, I went with Sweet Pickins Milk Paint. The directions on it said to mix equal parts of water to powder. Since this was my first coat and I was going for a layered chippy look, I added a splash of extra bond. The extra bond allows for the color to adhere to the dresser, so that my second color will chip to show the first color underneath. I will get to the pictures later, it makes sense with pictures, I promise (everything always does, ha).
So, with the first coat it will be thin and streaky. That is NORMAL. I applied a total of 2 coats of the green. If you are going to apply a second coat of the first color, ONLY add the extra bond to the initial first coat. DO NOT add extra bond to the second coat (per the instructions). The second coat looked better coverage wise
3. The Chippy goodness
Now, to achieve that chippy look you add a light coat of wax to the areas where you would like it to chip the most. This is where my OCD got the best of me. Milk paint is KNOWN to chip, but it chips in a very unpredictable, random way (that’s the beauty of it). So you can control SOME of the chips by adding the wax to where you want it to chip for sure.
After you wax-on-wax-off, you apply your second color (creamy) right on top. At first it looks funny, but I promise the outcome is beautiful. I ended up applying 2 coats of Creamy to get that really chippy look. I applied the first coat, waited 20 minutes, then went right in with my second coat.
After that, you let it dry and watch the magic happen. If you’re impatient like me, I used a blow dryer to speed up the chippy progress, ha!
4. Seal it and enjoy
Lastly, I used a 220 grit sanding block to sand down my entire piece to get the chipped paint off then I sealed this baby with more wax to prevent further chipping as I was happy with the way it looked. Unfortunately, you can’t seal milk paint with polycrylic because the water based formula will reactivate the milk paint and it will continue to chip. So all you have to do is reseal it every 3 or so months. If you’re using the furniture with fluids around it constantly, you have to reseal with wax more often.
I hope this has been helpful with yall and has opened yalls horizon to trying something new and fun! If yall need more tutorials, go check out Jami Ray Vintage on Youtube! She’s the best!
As always, if yall have questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below
