Falling in love with chalk paint on HBH

Whatever you’re an ‘expert’ in, there’s definitely always something new and exciting to learn, find and enjoy. During filming Half Built House, one of our clever researchers Lauren found a paint designed to be used to create an aged patina on furniture, mirror or any timber just hanging around waiting to be up cycled and made to look gorgeous. Created and manufactured by artist Annie Sloan, we discovered that this specially designed chalk paint could be painted directly onto other paint, varnish, timber etc without the need for stripping, sanding or priming – hello my new best friend! With so little time to turn our building sites on #HBH into beautiful rooms, this sounded too good to be true….. it wasn’t!!!

I’ve posted here three little photographic snippets – tasters of the furniture I rescued so you can see there are different types of effects dependent on what you do with it, how you apply it and how you finish it off, but I can’t tell you how easy it is to use. A complete delight. Water-based, fast drying, very durable and polished to a sumptuous sheen. Lushtastic. I used the soft wax and the dark wax, plus had a go at the metallic sizing.

I used her book ‘Creating The French Look’ as a guide but just got stuck in and experimented really. If you want to turn a boring old chest into a French style boudoir box, revamp a tired bedside table into a sexy glistening work of art or transform a pine kitchen table into a Provencale gourmet’s delight, have a go – you will fall in love too 🙂

Watch Half Built House on Channel 5, Tuesdays at 8pm on 24th and 31st August 🙂

Or HERE

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in all 30 shades can be found here.