Staining with Paint

Sorry for how sporadic my posts have been lately. Hubby has been crazy with military work, my kids have passed around sinus infections (at least they are sharing something) and I have been having some pretty serious kidney issues the past few months and to top that off my Graves Disease Thyroid levels were going crazy there for a little bit, add all that together and then put is smack dab in the midst of summer and you have a recipe for a hermitus, sunless, locked inside with a headache and wanting to sleep all day disaster. But now I’m back… I hope (fingers crossed, prayers said, voodoo magic done).

To start off this glorious back to blogging shindig I thought I would offer you all something that I keep getting asked to share… that should help you all forgive my absence and love me again right? (bribery works on my kids, hopefully it works on y’all too.)

 

Here we go….. (said in my best Peter Pan voice, include the doo do do do do do song in there if you wish.)

STAINING WITH PAINT!!!!!

One of the many things I love about BB Frosch is how versatile it is. I literally think I can do just about anything I want to do (when it comes to redoing pieces) with this fabulous product. I saw a few months ago how someone did a stain on a shelf but instead of using stain and waiting the million hours in between dry time and the next coat and then again between cure time and when it was ready to be used, she used brown paint mixed with BB Frosch chalk paint powder and “stained” with that.

 

WHAT the WHAT?!?!

 

No mess, no dry time, no crazy fumes and I can virtually pick any color I want and stain with it? Sold!!! You had me at hello!

 

First I started with the top of my hutch that I had already stained with regular stain but never sealed. I hated how long the dry time on the stain was and I wanted it in my house RIGHT NOW so I did not seal the top. I regretted it daily (well almost daily) because it just looked so dull and did not have any shine to it at all. As soon as I saw that you could stain with BB Frosch I thought that I would try sealing the top of my piece with the dark BB Frosch wax. (Make sure that when you wax you don’t use the same brush you painted with, once a brush is used for wax it should not be used for anything else.) You can totally tell the difference that the wax makes on the piece. It went from drab to fab in just a few short minutes. No more yucky dull stain. It was dry to the touch in 5 minutes and I put all my decor pieces right back on the hutch. I was in awe of how rich the dark wax made the piece. If you thought I loved BB Frosch in the past, now you KNOW I’m in love.

After that I decided it was finally time to do the top of the bench I made months ago. I made the bench right before Thanksgiving last year (and we needed it ASAP) but had NO desire to stain the top of it, even though I wanted it to be stained I did not want to take the time to stain it and we use it daily so there really was no time to wait for it to dry for days if I stained it, so it just sat there as fresh wood with no stain. When I saw that you could do the staining on stuff like this I decided to give it a go.

 

I started with a medium BB Frosch paint brush (I LOVE these paint brushes because they have a wider ferule then most brushes and a denser {round} head which is great with eliminating brush strokes), a wide-mouthed mason jar with enough water to cover the bristles on my brush, a plastic plate and the brown color I wanted to stain with, had already mixed the Chalk Paint Powder into the brown paint. To mix chalk paint you add 2 tbsp of the BB Frosch powder mixed with 1 tbsp of water to 8 oz of paint and then mix it all up. I mix the water and chalk paint powder in the squeeze bottle and then pour in the paint and shake it up until I don’t see the powder anymore.

 

I did a very wet coat of chalk paint the first few times I went over the bench. For a wet coat (or Lime Wash) you have your brush pretty wet. I dipped it in my paint that I had poured onto my plate. Then I did broad even strokes with the grain across the piece. After I did a coat I wiped off the excess and then brushed it one again.

 

I did this coat several times and made sure it was evened out in the coats.

 

There were spots on the wood where my kids had drawn on it with a permanent marker. I was worried I was going to have to just paint instead of stain so that the marker did not show through but I figured I would give this staining technique a shot first. Who would it hurt if it did not work? It only took me about 20 minutes and not very much paint (about $.50 worth) so redoing it if didn’t work was not a big deal.

 

After about 5 coats of the lime wash technique I was starting to see a bit of the color I wanted showing through.

 

I decided that I wanted a much darker color but since my brown was not super dark I knew that I was going to have to change the way I was painting up a little bit.

 

I ended up squirting some chalk paint in long lines in random places across the piece (this is why I love having my paint in a squeeze bottle, I can easily squeeze it and apply it where I want it.) I then took a dry brush (no more wet) and brushed the paint right on in the area I put it. I wanted it give it that more deep stain look.

After squeezing my paint and brushing it on in several spots around the piece (I just did it in the areas I felt needed to be darker) I had the look I was going for.

After I finished painting and had the look I wanted, I applied the dark wax right onto the paint (only do this if you are painting something dark, or staining it like this, applying dark wax before clear wax is not recommended on any other piece). You can see the difference in between the above and below pictures, the top picture is nice and dark while the bottom is much richer because the dark wax was applied. And the dark wax gives it that authentic stain look. No more spots where it looks like you brushed it on, it just really pulls the whole piece together.

 

 

You can see from this picture that the permanent marker can no longer be seen on the bench!! Wahoo!!!! Plan achieved. 

 

 

I’ve had several people ask me how well it cleans up. People often recommend sealing pieces like this that have high traffic and use and require constant clean up, with polyurethane or polyacrylic, I however am not a fan of poly’s because you can not go back and do touch up paint in the future. With wax, if you need to go do touch ups, because life happens and kids happen and sometimes pieces need touch ups, you can totally just repaint and re-wax the one area that needs it, without having to repaint the whole thing (with poly you are either stuck with the area needing touch up, or you repaint the whole thing). I have found that wax holds up just fine to life. I have four kids and this is their bench that they sit on and eat all their meals on, so it gets lots of use on a daily basis.

 

One day they were eating watermelon and spilled all over the bench and I was so tired at bed time I spaced cleaning it up, so in the morning there was a big sticky mess all over the bench, and literally it cleaned up with just some warm water on a rag. I did not even have to scrub it to get it to come clean (which is a million times better than my poly coated table top… yuck!! I need to redo that thing).

 

BEFORE:

 

AFTER:

 

 

 

 

The love that I feel for this bench is a bit weird… I mean, It’s just furniture after all, but still I just love it. 

 

I love the results and I love how well it cleans up. I can’t wait to do more pieces using the staining technique. I also just recently faux stained (made it look like stain) right on top of a piece I had that had been painted before, so no more having to sand a piece down to give it the stained look. You can stain right over the top of the current paint… OMGoodness!!! True love!!!

Have you tried BB Frosch chalk paint powder?

If not, you need too, you will find yourself saying, “Where has this been all my life?” over and over again.

You can go to my store to check out the products and buy them here.

To see the first project I ever did using BB Frosch (before I was lucky enough to join the company) go here:

 

 

To see the rest of the hutch go here

 

Partying over at:

Monday-

Bloggers Brag

Monday Funday Link Party

The Creative Corner

Lulu Girls Fabulous Party

Tutorials and Tips Link Party

Tuesday:

Trash To Treasure