Turning an ugly duckling into an uglier toad
Good JuJu, Hand Painted Furniture, how to's
This was previously an unattractive, not to my taste at all, chest of drawers. I’d brought it into the Good Juju sale last month to sit it in the parking lot area to get rid of cheap.
Then the day turned drizzly. I wondered if it would matter much if the ugly guy got wet, who cared? It couldn’t get worse.
But a nice dealer brought it inside for me. I quickly made space in my booth and then had to stare at it for the rest of the sale. After a bit of looking, I got past the finish ( which was so bad, I thought it was veneer, but it’s not, this is real wood) and thought, hmm, those are nice lines. And look at the pretty hardware.
So, while setting up for next month’s sale, I thought I’d leave the poor thing and maybe someone else would notice it’s possibilities too.
After arranging the furniture, I always take lots of photos to look at once I get home, to rethink areas and plan the smalls that I’ll be adding. When looking at this picture, I decided that this center area just looked sad and blah.
Instead of fetching the brown, ugly duckling chest and bringing it back home to give it a glow up, I packed up my paints and thought I’d do a quick turn over there.
Things did not go as planned. Maybe the warehouse was too cold? The temperature only stays warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing between shows. Maybe it was me trying to rush it? Maybe I didn’t bring enough color options or supplies with me to do what I wanted?
Whatever it was, I just kept getting murk. The duckling was turning into a toad, not a swan and I was turning into an obsessed, and unhinged painter. Poor Beth was working next to me in her space and had to listen to the whole dilemma as I was verbally assaulting my design decisions.
Here is what I learned. Well, I already knew it, but in this case, between the cold and rushing the situation the lesson on chalk paint was amplified.
Dried chalk paint will return to a liquid state if it gets wet, even more quickly if it is barely dry. Which is why most people use wax, not glaze over it. I was trying to use an umber glaze over a buttery cream chalk and what I was getting was a flesh toned blend of the two shades, not layers.
I tried many more layers and fixes, but the ugliness just became stronger. A quick project turned into an all dang day disaster.
At the end, I worked it out, slowly but surely by purposely blending the umber, cream and some white, over and over and over, building up incrementally during breaks of working on the rest of my space. While telling myself I should just take it home and start over
My stubbornness prevailed and I stayed till I got it right, then clear coated the piece so the chalk would never murk up again. Looking back, I realize that I could’ve used the water based clear coat over my cream color, then done the glaze over that, and clear coated again.
But that would’ve been too easy, and honestly, I didn’t think of it at the time because I kept trying just one more thing, then one more thing, on and on.
But now, I really like the lovely lines, hardware, and many, many blended coats of paint that nudged this ugly duckling into, well maybe not a swan, but at least an attractive duck.
