How to Paint & Distress Furniture With Milk Paint

by Living in a Fixer Upper

2 Materials

Milk paint is a low VOC water-based paint that requires no sanding or priming prep work, allowing for you to immediately start painting! I had a small entry table waiting in the wings to be made over and chose to go with the "distressed" look for this particular piece, a look that is super easy to attain. Let's get started!

how to paint distress furniture with milk paint, painted furniture

It started as a piece that showed no style; it came originally painted a dark brown and bearing a few chips on the tabletop. This table needed a major face-lift!

As milk paint requires no sanding or priming prep work, I was able to immediately start painting. However, because it was previously painted I started with a small test strip of paint on the back of the piece before going further. I'm so glad I did, for as soon as the paint dried it showed lots of streaks and some bubbling.

This told me one important fact: that brown paint was oil-based.

Milk paint is water-based...

...oil and water don't mix.

A scenario like this doesn't happen very often for me when dealing with other previously oil-based painted furniture - most of the time you can still paint right over such a piece with no problem. I'd say needing to actually sand happens on 5% of pieces I've ever done - very rare.

Thus...a little fyi gold nugget for y'all, and a ton of sanding for me. (silver lining: arm muscles?)

A few hours and a pair of arthritic hands later, I had worked a majority of the paint off and down to the original wood.

At last able to get to the fun part of painting, I got out my trusty General Finishes milk paint in Linen. This line of milk paint is fabulous because it also comes pre-mixed and has beautiful colors that can be custom mixed. I especially appreciate that the paint is very forgiving with brush paint strokes and does self-evening, making very smooth finishes on your furniture.

In a short while later the table looked like this:

Letting it dry completely overnight (important!), the next day I took a sponge sander and lightly went over the edges and corners of the table to give it more detail and "history". The process is to simply find the areas that you imagine getting worn or bumped most over the years, and go over them with the sander.

My favorite part is how the darker bits of the wood shows through around the border of the top edge on the tabletop.

Amazing difference from its humble beginnings! The power of paint, y'all. :)

For additional easy paint instructions for furniture such as gold-dipping, bronzing effects, or more info on milk paint, hop over to my blog at Draven Made! :)

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1 question

Karen Corso on Oct 15, 2017

I love the color you painted the table. I went to buy the Linen color and it seems so much darker. Is that the correct color?

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3 of 6 comments

Hillela G. on Jun 14, 2016
The power of paint, no kidding, looks great!

1 Reply
Colleen Baugus on Dec 13, 2016
very nice. where is the best place to buy milk paint?

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- Living in a Fixer Upper on Dec 13, 2016
  If you go to either General Finishes website or Miss Mustard Seed, both supply and list local suppliers near you :) Or if you have a Woodcraft store, they stock milk paint.
  
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