My first attempt at distressing furniture

I've always liked the look of distressed furniture but never thought I could do it myself until Mr. H gave me this book as a gift: color recipes for painted furniture by annie sloan. She gives instructions on how to transform tired looking furniture into something entirely different with paint "recipes".

 

After reading the book I was inspired and ready to experiment. I needed a piece of furniture that we didn't care too much about and found this chess table. I forgot to take a "before" picture so this is the best one I could find.

 

I must admit that although the book was an inspiration, I didn't follow the instructions exactly...as I did not have the same paints and tools that she had and I figured I could improvise with what I already had.

Here is what I did:

1) Painted the wood with white spray paint

2) After it dried, I sanded the edges with 150 grit sandpaper

3) I realized I needed another color to offset the white, so I took some light blue paint and blended it into some of the joints and seams with my fingers.  Here is the finished product:





My favorite part of the distressing was the little crater on
the right corner that I didn't notice before.

Some lessons learned:

1) Don't worry about being too careful. After my first attempt at sanding and trying to make it look distressed, you could hardly tell I did anything. I was afraid of taking too much paint off. I had to sand off more paint to get the look I wanted. Do not be too scared of "ruining" the piece of furniture. It's supposed to look used and kind of like it's falling apart!

2) Something else I would do differently next time is paint the color I want to "peek" through first, under the main color. In this case, it would have been the light blue under the white. Then when you sand it, the color underneath will show through.