Bench Makeover

An old bench gets a painted makeover!

Remember that bench I picked up earlier in the summer?

I’m finally sharing its makeover!

I’ve actually had this bench done for a while.  The problem was photographing it!  It sits in a super dark corner in our home with weird shadows. The struggle with photographing it in that space has been real! I don't know how many times I've tried to take photos of it! It always ended with me getting super discouraged & giving up!

I finally got my act together yesterday & decided this time was going to be it!  No matter what the pictures looked like, I was sticking with it & getting it done!

Aaand here they are!

Now, here are all the details about the bench!

Here’s what the bench looked like when I first bought it:

What I loved about the bench was it is super sturdy!  It’s heavy & has good bones.  I wanted to paint it because it had some wear spots in areas & I’m more comfortable painting things.  One day, I want to branch out into actually refinishing furniture! For now, painting things works well for me!

I first thought about painting the bench white.  I even painted the first coat of white before I realized I hated it!  Then I decided I wanted to paint it a super dark color!  To achieve this, I had to do a little color mixing.  I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® in Napoleonic Blue as my starting point.  My next step would have been to mix it with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® in Graphite but I’m currently all out of it!  Graphite is one of my favorite Chalk Paint® colors!

Since I’m all out of Graphite, I got creative.  I have a lot of black acrylic paint so I decided to use that for mixing.  I kept adding black paint to the Napoleonic Blue until I liked the color.  I wasn’t sure how the different paint types (chalk & acrylic) would mix together, but they did fine!
After a couple coats of paint & a little distressing, my bench was ready to go!  I sealed the bench with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® Clear Wax.  If I had to do it again, I’d use polyurethane.  I can’t get the hang of the wax!  It always make my pieces look weird!  I’m much better at using polyurethane!

I put the bench in our little entryway area & I love it there.  It adds a homey touch to the entryway.  It’s a great place to sit down & put on/take off our shoes or just hang out!