The Turquoise Heirloom

There are not many things in this world that I won't paint, but there are some that I don't like to paint!  For starters, chairs. And you can guess why.  I know I don't like to paint chairs because I have painted a ton of them. Many times when I host a chalk paint demo at the Antique Gallery I will paint a chair because  you can paint, distress and wax one in about 2 hours.  Here are some examples.

Bearing in mind that I don't like painting chairs you can probably imagine my reaction when my husband announced  "Dean wants you to paint a chair for Kylie".  So what's the big deal with that, you might ask?  Dean is a coworker.  Ok, maybe he's more than a coworker - he is actually my husband's boss.  Kylie is his beautiful, super talented daughter who is about to start her new career in teaching.  And the chair?  Well, the chair has history.  It's a family heirloom.  Belonged to Dean's great grandmother. And it has about a zillion spindles.  No pressure here! 
 



 

I agree to paint the chair with a zillion spindles because that's what I do, I paint furniture for people!  Of course I want to do a good job cause I like these people and who doesn't want to make a good impression with their work?  You can see that I forgot to take a before pic.   Did I mention a zillion spindles?  Sherwin Williams used to carry a curved roller made just for painting round things like spindles but when I inquired about them at the store the kid behind the counter gave me one of those 'what an idiot' looks.  No curved roller to be found.

 
When painting spindles you kinda have to go at it from every possible angle with every tool you can find.

 

Some how I managed to get two coats of paint on and decided the color was perfect!  The coast is not clear though - I still had to distress it.  They wanted light distressing, which is normally what I do, but I had this fear that I would overdo it and have to paint the chair all over again.  And all those spindles.  The best places to distress are the ones naturally aged.

 

 

 

 

Much to my surprise the distressing came out perfect!  This old chair has so much character it's almost like it was painting and distressing itself!  The project I was most concerned about getting right was probably one of the easiest I have ever done.  Enjoy Kylie!