Paint Washing ~ Using paint and water as a stain ~ Control your tone without losing grain!

Unsure of how to revamp my furniture, I went out on a limb and tried something I have never done: Paint Washing. As an alternative to limited stain tones -and wanting to avoid chalk paint- I am excited to share how I did it and the results! I am obsessed with my 'new' furniture, y'all.

I have an obsession with timeless, heirloom, solid wood furniture. It will never go away, and it likely stems from my childhood of reading thick, seasonal Sears catalogs for fun as a seven year old. 

Yes, I was an unusual child...I recall turning to the bedroom sets first! I had always wanted a frilly canopy top for my twin rice bed, with an entire 80 piece matching set (curtains, rugs and all), but mom never committed to the idea.

In 2011, I purchased my current king size headboard/footboard from a thrift store in Clarksville, TN for $25. It was heavy and solid, but I hated the wood tone. I love tall four poster beds, but also knew that we'd continue moving often in this army life and ceiling heights in a owner's suite are never ideal (we've had slanted, low, high). So I settled on this cheap low profile four poster, in an ugly orange shade of stain. 

Lucky for y'all, I photo document everything! 

This bed was honestly my first EVER refinish job, which feels so wrong to call it such now. I remember it like yesterday. We attempted to strip the stain, but our lack of knowledge back then made us rush the process. It didn't quite work. Our newb solution was to say "Screw it" instead of learn, so we grabbed a few cans of satin black spray paint and did things the easy way. We also went ahead and sprayed up a pair of night stands -to match- that we picked up at a different thrift shop for $20 each.

The black, fresh after the spray paint.

I was so proud of this thing. This bed, and the nightstands, have now seen SIX houses since! 

But my taste in furniture has majorly shifted. Add in dark hardwood floors in our new place, and the black furniture just made the room feel 'heavy'. We went furniture shopping all over the area, and I still could not find something that felt like us, yet was quality, solidly made. Even at "high end" stores. 

After a few Pinterest searches regarding differing wood tones, I fell for the natural, neutral wood look and took a trip to Home Depot with an idea up my sleeve and a goal.

Shopping list:

-box of gloves

-CitriStrip (I bought a big 64 oz)

-Krud Kutter

-tack cloth

-60 grit through 120 grit sanding wedge blocks

-Mouse hand sander (also various grit sanding pads) 

-lots of wire brushes

-bleach

-paint (sample sizes in dark, medium base and light tan taupe/mushroom/gray-ish neutral browns, also my existing Behr paints in Cotton Gray and Cotton Blossom white)

-Polycrylic (water based)

-mineral spirits

-saran wrap

-lint free shop rags (or ripped up old cotton tees)

-solo cups

-2" & 3" paint brushes, angled and flat (I didn't buy cheapo, but not super expensive either)

Total: Roughly $100, but I did not own this type of particular sander beforehand and some of the other supplies

I stripped, dried, sanded, stripped, dried, sanded, and holy heck, that sanding was BRUTAL on my arm muscles, or lack thereof. But the satisfaction of my first stripping was SOOOO rewarding. It was weird to see that ugly orange toned bed again. It's only been eleven years! 

The key to my strip job working this time around was patience! I actually have learned with past refinish jobs through the years that it has to sit long enough, but not get dry. If it's crackling and bubbling, it's working. And thee most important thing, IMO, CitriStrip works best when a heavier layer is used. Thin layers have never given me great results. Hence the 64 oz bottle size! You can also wrap the piece in plastic to let the stripper penetrate longer without it drying out, but I didn't do this on this project.

NOTE: Removing spray paint creates some hardcore goopy messes. Sometimes I felt like the consistency was 'bubble gum'. This was the toughest paint removal process I have ever dealt with.

Once totally stripped, I cleaned the grooves of the bed knobs with a wire brush dipped in stripper. I cannot lie, there were some areas I just could not get every little bit of paint -or even the original stain- off of. But it later did not affect the outcome too much. 

After each stripping and sanding, I did use mineral spirits to clean the excess strip/dust off.

Once I was happy with the natural state of the wood, I took the headboard and footboard to the sunny side of the house, propped them against my trash & recycle cans and gave them a spray of bleach water. Basically a homemade brew of maybe 1:6 bleach to water ratio. This helped lighten the wood. I repeated this process maybe three times. I never soaked it in bleach water, just made sure I covered it entirely with even sprays.

After the wood dried, I moved it back into the garage and pumped myself up to start the process of painting this thing again. But after all of the sanding and stripping, I knew I couldn't fuck it up or I'd end up giving up. That's legit.

In three separate solo cups (was that redundant?), I mixed each paint color with water. About a 1:3 ratio of paint to water. Mixed it well. I then applied the lightest shade first, working in sections so that the paint would not quite entirely dry. It's important to note that I applied these methods to BOTH the headboard and footboard at the same time, just to be sure they'd match.

Using lint free shop towels, I'd wipe the paint off in the direction of the grain. Let completely dry, wipe with tack cloth, then reapply. 

My colors:

Lightest: Anew Gray - Sherwin from Lowe's

Mid base: Tavern Taupe - Sherwin from Lowe's

Darkest: Landmark Brown - Behr from Home Depot

Later, I used a bit of Behr's Cotton Blossom as an accent color for night stands 

Already a HUGE difference with just one shade. Still too gray for my taste

Here you can see the bottom half of the photo is after applying the Tavern Taupe mixture. It was a little too light oak-ey than I wanted. Reminded me of my mom's 1990s bedroom set

This is where taste and desired look becomes important. I then used the light tan (mid base Tavern taupe) color, but that gave me a shade I didn't appreciate. The 1990s oak shade. Blah.

To ensure everything stayed even, I applied the mid base all over both pieces, despite my hatred, and then grabbed my Landmark Brown solo cup.

Application of Landmark Brown after the mid base

A definite difference

After, I swiped some random areas with the dark and light again using a smaller paint brush, just to give it some dimension of color, like wood should have. This gave me the look I was wanting!

I did plan to poly it after, but I was SO IN LOVE with how it looked that I was afraid poly could alter that love. I left it alone. Reassembled and voila! I just adore the hell out of it. A couple months later, I still enter my room and smile at my bed.

The nightstands:

You can see one of them in the last photo. Boo!

Getting the spray paint off the night stands wasn't too hard. This is because the type of wood is different than the bed. Different woods have differing porosity. I was actually able to skip CitriStrip by simply sanding the old paint off the night stands. This saved me SO much time.

NOTE: Before applying CitriStrip or any stripping agent, try carefully using a hand sander with a 60/80 grit first! If the paint comes off easily, forgo the stripper and thank yourself later for saving time. Unfortunately, the same exact paint on my bed did not budge, so I had no choice in that matter. Boo hiss. Oh, and use a mask when dealing with a sander, folks.

Once the old paint was gone, I used the same method from the bed on the front of the drawers and the tops of the night stands until they matched the tone of the bed. This is where the saran wrap gets handy. I obviously didn't finish these projects in a day's time (the bed total time was about 4 days). And I was afraid to remix my paint and water, in fear of getting a slightly different shade. I wrapped the tops of the solo cups in saran wrap, as well as each paint brush for each color. This preserved the paint/water mix & brushes all long enough for me to do the nightstands a few days later. All I had to do was give them a good stir.

After I matched the bed tone, I let them completely dry, then applied poly to both the tops and the drawer faces. Because we set cups and junk on the nightstands, sealing it was a must. It did slightly darken the look, but still basically matches the bed. BUT I am still glad I did not poly the bed!

I didn't want everything too matchy matchy in the room, so once my poly tops and drawers cured, I taped them off, and used some old Behr in Cotton Blossom white to paint the remaining bulk of the night stands. I really like this white! It's not stark, but soft and creamy without being overly warm. I previously used it on my 'built ins' in the dining room.

Gave it a couple coats of the white, let dry and done! I did change out the old hardware for simple black matte pulls/handles. I bought them on eBay for $2 each with free shipping, as I could not find what I wanted locally.

It was super difficult to get that black edge around the face off, no lie. I ended up accepting defeat, but now it doesn't bother me.

I absolutely love this method for toning wood projects!!! I wish I had done it sooner. What's super cool about it is that you can choose ANY color. Purple wash that junk! Put some green on it! Stains do have a larger variety of hues nowadays, but they still are limited when compared to paint aisles. This is an excellent alternative if you can't quite find that stain color you envision.

Tips:

-Keep a small sample of pure white and black paint handy. I do this for every project. These come in clutch when you need to darken or lighten an oopsie color, which recently happened with my laundry room paint job.

-The Dollar Tree stores have some decent supplies if you're on a tight budget. 

-Remember that every project -generally speaking- can be fixed if you goofed it. Just may take you longer!

I have some dressers that may be next on the list, but I am leaning towards an opaque chalk finish with those. Unfortunately, summer has arrived here in Georgia, so I may have to wait until fall before hanging out -willingly- in the heat of my garage again. But I am itching to use this method again! Nearly fool proof and so easy!