Stripped and Greywashed Vintage Sidetable

by DIY Passion

$30

3 Months

Advanced

To say this project was a beast would be an understatement :) This little table has been in my life for the better part of three decades and it was starting to really show it's age and mistreatment. I love it - but it needed some help, I thought.

stripped and greywashed vintage sidetable, chalk paint, outdoor furniture, painted furniture

You can see the layers and layers and layers of paint that had built up over the years. In fact, the table itself is more than 50 years old. That should have been a warning to me!

Back in the spring, I set to stripping it down. I knew I couldn't paint over it without first stripping it because the paint was so gunky and drippy, it would have looked like a bad patch job.

I slathered with with CitrusStrip and then covered it as best I could with black garbage bags. I did this THREE times and left it overnight at least once. (So not pretty!)

But, it gave me some hope because when I peeled back the plastic - it looked all bubbly like this!

But that only got me this far. *sigh* - Keep in mind, at this point, I was on weekend three or four of working on this table!

I sanded and stripped and scraped. I used steel wool and sand paper and small wood scraping tools. I used chemical stripper and non-toxic stripper. I did everything. I googled everything. I just couldn't get it 100% smooth to the point where I was happy with the way the natural wood looked. (At this point I was 12 weeks into this project!!)

So to give the table a sixth life (haha!) I mixed up a grey wash using Annie Sloan chalk paint and water. And then I distressed the daylights out of the table.

I did manage to save the wood on the very top piece and just gave it some depth with a super watery grey wash. So the treatment on this table now really tells its story - old, weary, and a little distressed... but I guess that's okay, right? ;) See the full journey with this table on our blog at www.diypassion.com