Another wonderful seminar I attended at Haven
Blog Conference was "Advanced Painting Techniques"
(This is part of a series of posts done to share good ideas from Haven to those bloggers who would
Yeah! You and I have good seats at this seminar...I came an hour early. These photos of the
screen look off-kilter we are so close...I tried to edit them but it didn't help much.
speaker at this seminar but she got sick was unable to come.
Marion had put out the word (I think I missed the memo) to
wear paint clothes to this seminar because we would actually
be trying some paint techniques at the end of the talk.
The girls who DID wear paint clothes got a Frog Tape t-shirt.
The worst-paint-clothes lady there got some Annie Sloan
paint brushes as her prize.
Don't be scared off by the title of "advanced" paint techniques.
There was lots of good tips and advice for anyone at any level.
Marion said that when she started painting furniture that she
used a good quality seim-gloss latex. She likes the Benjamin
Moore and Sherwin Williams brands for this type of painting.
Latex does not fully cure until it is 30 days old.
You should let it fully cure before moving it or selling it
(or put a tag on it for the buyer stating that).
You don't need to but you can put a polyurethane coat on it.
The shinier that paint finish, the harder it will cure.
If you are not going to distress the piece of furniture
you are painting, you can spray the latex paint on.
Marion uses a compressed air paint sprayer for this.
You will need to thin the latex paint to use it in a
sprayer. Thin it to a consistancy of one drop per
second of paint dripping off of the paint stick.
She uses "Gloss Off" to strip the tops of the pieces
(as shown in the picture above) and expose the wood.
She uses a bonding primer under the latex to
help keep the paint on the piece.
Another type of water-based paint good for
painting furniture is chalk paint.
Like most of us, when she heard about a line of chalk
paint coming over from England a little over a year ago,
she first thought it was chalk board paint. She has achieved
great looks with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. She says that
it has good adhesive properties and distresses well.
She also likes to use milk paint to achieve a distressed finish.
There are different thicknesses of milk paint.
It will "resist" as it dries and some of it will flake off.
You can add a special bonding agent to milk paint.
Most milk paints are all natural and have lime in them.
milk paint at the end of July! She showed us paint chips
of the first colors that will be in the line.
Here is a mock-up of the packaging that will be used.
( I didn't realize it at the time, but the drawing on the box is the same piece of furniture that is on the "Latex"
slide that she used in the presentation. I think this was one of her first "famous" pieces that she did).
The names she has selected for the colors are really cute.
The color of the dresser on the package will be the color
of the milk paint inside. She will have online video tutorials
about how to mix and use the milk paint. It will be easy
to ship the paint because it is a powder that you add water
to when you are ready to put it on the furniture piece.
Oil paint is good to use on kitchen and bathroom cabinets.
Oil paint can be rolled on or brushed on with a high
quality brush like the Purdy brand of brushes.
Spray paint certainly has its place for decorative items.
Marion feels like canned spray paint is not good for
wooden furniture because it is difficult not to get a
spray paint pattern on the piece.
She likes the spray paint chalkboard paint that has
come out (but not for furniture).
She does not use primers with chalk paint or milk paint.
Next she covered Top Coats.
Ummm...I don't have any notes on the polyurethane that
is pictured but here is what she said about waxes:
She feels like Minwax (which is probably most common)
will yellow white furniture that it is put over.
The waxes that she prefers are Annie Sloan, Briwax,
Fiddles & Son's and her own wax that will be
coming out with her milk paint launch.
Don't put dark wax straight out of the can on to
a piece of painted furniture. You need to put clear wax
on your brush first and THEN get just a dab of dark wax
on the end of the bristles and work them in together.
Wax dries quickly so you need to buff it before it dries.
If you can see your fingerprint in the wax, you need
to buff more of it off.
Don't put dark wax over a stain.
Don't use colored cloths for buffing.
To add another color to a small area of the piece,
Marion's favorite brush is a 2" sash brush. She does not
have to tape off areas if she uses this size brush.
She does not paint the inside of drawers.
For painting on details and vines, she uses a 1.0 liner brush.
For lettering a sign, she uses a 1/2" angle brush.
Miss Mustard Seed now prefers strippers over sanding.
Her favorite strippers are Smart Strip, Citrus Strip, and
Motsencoker Stripper. (Has she seen "Magic Mike"?)
Clean off the stripper product with mineral spirits.
Put stain on with a cloth NOT a brush.
After getting some stain on the cloth, rub it down in
a straight line along the wood grain.
You can also use stain as an antiquing agent over paint.
When you buy a piece of furniture to refinish, know
your limitations. Don't buy something that is beyond
fixing with your skills or that will take way too long to fix.
If you see a piece that has "chippy veneer" decide if you
can just pull off the bad piece and just "go with it" being
what it is...an old piece of furniture.
Old red stain on furniture can bleed through a paint finish.
You can try to seal in the red finish before starting to paint.
At the end of the presentation, we went to tables to
see the paint products up close. Here Marion is showing
us her milk paint and how to mix it.
It does have an unusual smell when it is first mixed
but the furniture piece it is used on will not smell.
Marion has a book on painting coming out this Fall!
I asked her if it was alright to share the info from this
seminar in a post and she said that she did not mind.
She will probably be doing a book signing tour so
if she comes to a city near you, go meet her...she's so nice!
