Spool Turned Dresser – A Tailored Blend Of Chippy Milk Paint

The Before

Here is the dresser before, in all its cherry fineness. The top had several severe gouges running across it

This is the before shot of what I started this project with.

A Bit of Fixin

The top needed a major sanding and refinishing, originally I had planned on staining the top and drawer fronts for a two toned mix of stain and paint. luckily the gouges sanded out really well with a number of different grade papers.

 Time For A Change In Plans

Don’t You Know, sometimes things don’t always go as planned when refinishing furniture, I really did not like the way the grain was revealing itself. Not at all what I expected!

OFMP Color Choices

The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co. provided me with plenty of colors and products to play with to create custom mixed blends of paints and finishes, those who follow my behind the scenes on Instagram may remember this shot.

Color Mixing

With milk paint, you are not limited in your color choices, it’s really easy and fun to come up with your own custom blends of color in just the amounts you need. I mixed up my own custom blends of grey and blue for this piece.

For the Dove Grey : 5 parts Snow White, 1 Part Driftwood

For The Blue Green: 1 part Snow White, 2 parts SeaGreen, 1 Part Federal Blue

Milk Paint on Raw Wood

When painting milk paint on raw wood, you get a superb flawless finish! I just love how the woods actually soaks up the paint into it, and it retains its grain. No chipping here, lending a smooth tailored look exactly what I was going for.

In The Grain

Here’s a close up shot of the top, look at that lovely grain you see when the light catches it just right. This is after the first coat of paint, with equal parts Extra Bond added in, normally on raw wood you don’t need a bonding agent, but as a precaution I really wanted to make double sure the top and drawers were not going to chip on me, in case I had issues with that red stain and…. it did bleed in spots, so I spot shellacked those to seal, then added second grey coat with no bonding agent. C- Ya later horrid red stain!

Let Her Chip

Because this piece was such a heavy cherry stain I opted to seal the body first with a coat of Shellac to prevent the red stain bleeding through, I then gave the Shellac a very light sanding to give it some tooth for the Milk Paint to adhere to. And…no bleedthrough!

For the body I created another custom blend with the paint this time not using any of the bonding agent, I wanted this part to chip up.  I used a heat gun to speed up the drying process, lightly sanded and finished it off with Daddy Van’s clear wax in yummy orange lavender scent.

A Protective Finish

For the dresser top and drawers I opted to use the SafeCoat for extra durability, my kids are really tough on finishes and I want the highly used tailored parts on this piece to stay that way!

Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co.

The original, all-natural paint with the soft chalky finish, and the original powdered formula, since 1974. Just add water and paint! Producing zero-voc Old Fashioned Milk Paint & SafePaint milk paint for walls, Antique Crackle, Extra-Bond and distributors of Daddy Van’s Beeswax, AFM Safecoat Acriglaze Matte Finish and Hope’s 100% Tung Oil.