Painted French Table

Well I have to say I had fun painting this one but it took most of my Sunday.   Come to thing of it, a good part of my Saturday too.

    

I painted a beat up small oak table with some black chalk paint.  Pretty ugly n’est pas?    I painted it on Saturday and I brought it inside the house to work on because it rained for most of the day. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Saturday.  Watched a movie while I painted.  All was good.    I gave the table two coats of paint and let it dry until Sunday when I got busy with trying to figure out a way to get some French writing on it.

    

I ended up finding this great fine wines graphic   from The Graphics Fairy along with some tips about how to make a graphic bigger than what your printer can print on one sheet.  Check out the link to Block Posters .com which can help you change the size of your graphics.    After printing it out, I took some white chalk and rubbed it on the back side of the paper behind the letters. Then after centering the printout on the table and taping it down, I took a ball point pen and traced the letters on the front side of the printout which left the white chalk imprint on the table of all the lettering. I then painstakingly :) hand painted each of the imprinted chalked letters. It took a while but it was exciting to see the words start to take shape on the table.   (And Yes, that is an Oreo cooking sitting on my work table!)

One of the hardest parts (at least emotionally) for me was to then take my little black French table and beat it up and add some distressing to it.  But, it had to be done so with a small piece of sandpaper I sanded the edges and a few areas on the top and on each of the legs.  After wiping the paint and chalk dust off, I was ready to give it a coat of wax.  This photo is of it before I waxed it.    After the wax dried, which took about 15 to 20 minutes, I buffed it all out and the table now had a rich sheen to it.  It was coming to life!

So here it is next to a chair that I am currently working on.  The chair still needs another coat of paint and I was also trying to get a feel for what to recover the seat with.  That is a scrap piece of burlap that I loosely wrapped over the seat and I think I like the beige/brown burlap next to the black so tomorrow I’ll be picking up some more burlap.  Anyway, I am happy with how the table turned out.  I combined the chalk transfer method with some bits of another stencil that I had and I also made my own stencil for the “Vins ~ Fins”  part.    It’s going to be hard to know what to place on the table because I don’t want to cover up any of the words! 

Not sure if I am keeping this one yet or not.  It seems to be taking me a few days after I am finished to be able to part with any of my projects.  :)

I am linking this post up to Brag Monday over at the Graphics Fairy.   More projects to check out there.  Stop by when you get a minute!