from Gardners 2 Bergers: Faux Chippy Pine Farmhouse Table

This week's post is from a friend and Weatherwood stockist friend, April James from April James Interiors. April is a professional, certified painter and I always learn new techniques from her. She takes a brand new pine table and turns it into an authentic-looking antique. I don't know anyone who do make a brand new piece look like a textured, chippy old piece of farmhouse furniture better than April!

For this project, you'll learn how to distress furniture without having to sand off the stain. It makes for a quick layered look and a lot less work.

Materials

Raw wood, this was a pine table

Weatherwood Stains' Reclamation stain

Sand paper and hand sander

Chalk Paint
Rags
Wax or Varnish Topcoat

Directions

1.] SAND: Begin by sanding the wood piece, that way the wood will easily accept the stain and create a good pallet to begin your work. Start with a rough grit with a 120 grit.

2.] STAIN: Once the wood has been stripped or sanded back down to raw, you can stain it using Weatherwood Stain's Reclamation stain. You'll see in the above time-lapse, the color change is subtle and is pretty similar to Restoration Hardware's "Natural" color.

Tip: The result is this pretty tan color you see below (left). If you're looking for more of a gray color (right) use Weatherwood Stain's "Pining."

Pining

Reclamation

3.] PAINT: You can use any paint to paint over Weatherwood Stains. However this piece was painted with Annie Sloan chalk paint and this following technique is specific to that brand.

Paint the piece of furniture AND you will be distressing the paint while the piece is still wet. So think ahead, you may want to paint your piece in sections.

4.] DISTRESS: April strategically removes the white paint, to reveal weathered wood beneath. To do this type of distressing, just use a wet, cotton rag. The rag should be wet, but not dripping. to remove paint while it was still wet. Just rub off the wet paint, making sure to rinse your rag if it gets too loaded with paint. WATCH HOW ABOVE!

5.] PAINT ROUND 2: April mixed a custom color for the final layer, a custom blue, and the color is just right. She has an amazing eye for color. She paints on her second color, this blue coat, and then wipes it back with a wet rag to remove it again. You can see how more blue is removed, leaving the white and the aged wood beneath?