How often do you serve leftovers for dinner in your house?  Do you just reheat and serve or prefer to turn last night’s leftovers into a totally new dish?  Makeover dinner, if you will.

Believe it or not, this is an analogy.  Today’s post is not about food.  Although now I am hungry and thinking about how we have nothing planned for dinner…

Anyway, in the milk paint world it is pretty easy to finish a project and have paint left over.  Once you get the hang of mixing and forecasting how much paint you’ll need for a specific piece, you’ll probably have less leftovers.  I don’t mind it because I always have another project on deck.  The thing is, I rarely want to paint 2 pieces in a row the same color.  So I tend to mix up all of my leftovers for a custom color.

This color is very close to shutter gray however there is more green in it.  The mix was about 50% shutter gray, 25% lucketts green and 25% french enamel.  Only one of those had bonding agent in it so there’s something like a quarter strength bonding agent in the solution which is what I was hoping for believe it or not (runonsentence).  I painted 3 thin coats on the table getting a subtle chipping around the carved details.

I covered the entire piece in antiquing wax to highlight all of the great carved details.  I used an old oil based paintbrush to apply the antiquing wax on the table.  I did not use clear furniture wax at all, just the dark antiquing wax for an authentic aged finish.  The stiff bristles subtly distressed the paint where it was flaking and sanded down the paint in other areas all while applying the wax.  This application method really helped to create texture.  The antiquing wax will act as a topcoat as well.

I decided to leave the top piece unpainted because the finish was in really great shape.

I like how it sort of frames the table.  We can insert pictures and things underneath the glass.  We are using this little French coffee table as a plant table since it is protected from water.

The black-eyed susans in my garden just started blooming!

That’s the newest addition ’round here!  I just love milk paint…3 new colors coming very soon.  Stay tuned.

What’s for dinner?