Saturday, May 26, 2012
Distressed Rocking Chair The Essential Cottage Chic
In my last post I left you with what will be know as The Rocking Chair Cliffhanger...How could you all stand such anticipation? :) As promised here we go. Oh yes and let me apologize in advanced and I am really terrible at remembering to take the pictures every step of the way. I'm more like sand, sand, sand ouch my arm is sore...oh snap I forgot to take an original before...better do it now. That's how it usually happens and how it went a couple times with the rocker...whoops. Anyway, here is the rocker as you can see I had already sanded it but you get the gist. Isn't it cute they way it looks like the a Polaroid picture? I did it over at PicMonkey its fun and as of now FREE! Gotta love that. http://www.picmonkey.com So after sanding I took a hunk of Gulf Wax and rubbed it on the parts of the chair that I was sure I wanted wood to show through.
I began applying the primer I believe it was the Kilz brand. I rolled where a could but mostly it was all applied by brush. It was at this point I came to realize that painting spindles is hard work. I know right! Who woulda thought! Its very difficult to keep the coats even without noticeable lines. I believe for the most part I persevered. As you can see, again, I forgot to take the pic of the primed chair before starting to put a coat of the pretty blue color for the underlay. This time I think I'll blame it on those darn spindles.
So next up is a nice coat of a slightly off white. Now here I must say I was way too fussy. It could have just been one coat and that would have been fine but I kept going and ended up applying 3 coats of this white to fully cover the blue a choice I would come to regret. As you can tell it was dark by the time I finished that final coat. I was determined to be done painting. The next day I began, excited to be getting started aging and distressing this rocker. I had a vision in my mind I could see so clearly where I wanted the blue to show and where I 
wanted it to distress right down to the wood. So i sanded and I sanded and I sanded...Remember Ray, the live in builder, every time he passed me he chuckled and mumbled you worked so hard to get that paint on just right and now you're just sanding it off.
Oh yes HAHA very funny, sweat dripping down my brow my arms feeling like rubber, yes Ray you're such the comedian. I guess I just wasn't feeling very humorous. And now the regret began to set in, why did I coat so thick! And then there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It started to come together and even though my arms and hands were tired, I was beginning to think maybe it was a good idea those 3 coats. The White was looking so creamy next to distressed areas. I was feeling rather pleased with myself the chair was looking very special.But it needed something, something extra special and it hit me a cool checkerboard painted on the bottom of the seat.With the checkerboard applied and nicely distressed this chair was ready for it's finish to be applied. 
I applied a wipe on poly in satin, Minwax, because wipe on poly is an oil based product this gave my chair a nice aged yellowing look that was perfect. After it dried a very light sanding with very fine grit paper and another coat of poly. And another light sanding and then the final coat of poly.Later that week I went to my local Salvation Army Store and found a light pink and light green plaid sham and a small rectangular pillow. Now I've never made a pillow before but then again I never distressed a piece of furniture and that turned out well. I folded the sham in half around the pillow pinned it and ran it through the sewing machine. And just like magic it worked and I had a cute little pillow for my Mom's new rocking chair! So what do you think? Enjoy ~ Tracy
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