Carved Buffet in Milk Paint

Another Milk Paint saga! This little buffet was the guinea pig for my 3rd trial at milk paint!

The Real Milk Paint co. had sent me some colors in Peacock Blue and Black. 

Since I'm redoing my living room in grays, teals and blue-gray, I thought I would try out the peacock blue,  which is really a dark greenish teal. I decided to mix peacock and that really 

intense cobalt-ultra marine blue to get the below color. 

I just love mixing paint and creating my own colors!

I picked up this little gem back in March and it's been sitting in my garage ever since.  I just could not decide on a color!  It had this weird varnish in a dead-fish gray color that was so ever not appealing.

As you can see, this piece is a block of solid oak with a very defined and heavy grain. You could sand till the cows came home and not get a smooth finish.

First step, stripping.  Yeah! My most favorite thing to do!!! NOT.

 OMG, tiny nooks and crannies are an absolute stripping nightmare. 

I've talked about my Soy Gel stripper before, but I'll say it again, "This stuff is da bomb!" 

No odor, non toxic, you don't even need gloves, you can clean it up with straight water

 and it works just as well if not better than that nasty stuff. I'm serious, if you have to strip wood, this is what you want. I got mine online about 5 years ago but you can go to the 

"realmilkpaint" site and purchase it as well. And check out their colors

for their paint line! 

 If you have very soft wood, I wouldn't recommend using a heavy wire brush to clean. It will scratch the crap out of it. However, this oak was so dense, I needed something strong. 

So here are the milk paint colors. The greenish-teal is the actual peacock blue and the one on the right is my mixture.  I used both colors on the piece as well as another lighter blue.

 It's really hard to tell what your color will look like until you put your finishing tung oil or wax on it.

The above picture is what it looks like when the paint dries. The one below is after applying the
Tung oil finish!   Quite the difference!   It's quite easier than applying wax.
 You mix the
pure tung oil with some citrus solvent (All natural and used to make the oil spreadable. it evaporates)  and apply. Thats it. Waxing is quite the workout! This is super easy.  (And the tung oil you get at Home Depot is NOT the same. Look at the label,,,,it says
Tung-Oil FINISH. Very little if any actual tung oil.

 The top was pretty simple. Sanded and applied a coat of MinWax "Special Walnut".

 The hardware was absolutely horrific. It was 50+years of tarnish and black "I don't know what".
Brasso barely touched it. I even used my wire polishing wheel. That got about half of it off. I gave up and used Rub n Buff in "Gold Leaf".  Looks great!

The drawer liner things were covered in a yucky green velvet.  Um, no. Buh-bye

                                                     Just a little close-up of the detailing.

 I am going to try and stage this baby inside the house as soon as I find a helper to move it

Here is the living room in the beginning to change phase. I'm thinking this corner of the room because it's somewhat of a dead space. The grayish blue on the wall is the color I'm debating. 

 I'm not leaving the campaign piece here, I just don' t have a spot for it yet.  I seriously need to unload some furniture!




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