Milk Paint Cabinet Hutch { Furniture Makeover }

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I’ve spent the past two days bring Christmas into my ACM booth space.  My goal was to have my space madeover by November 1st . . . better late than never!

I decided to go with a blue and red color theme for my space this year, so I’ve been paint a lot of things blue lately in preparation.

Like this Flow Blue Milk Paint desk,

and little blue footstool.

My last blue paint project was this cabinet hutch that I found at Antique Alley earlier this fall.

I’m not really sure of its age, but it has some fantastic details that help give it a primitive look, like the rough cut nails and brass hinges.

It was missing a pane of glass, but that’s not a big problem.  Rather than replace it, I decided to just remove all of the glass and leave the doors open.

After hunting around for some inspiration, I found a recent post by Miss Mustard Seed where she created a fantastic primitive look on an old cabinet using two layers of blue milk paint. I already had the two colors she used on hand, so I decided to try the same technique out on this hutch.

I won’t steal her tutorial post, so if you want to read more about the step by step process please click the link above to head to her site.  I will walk you through though what my cabinet looked like along the way.

I started out with one coat MMS Milk paint in Artissimo, which is a fantastic, deep blue color.

I did not apply any bondage agent or do any sanding, but the paint stuck well and didn’t really chip anywhere.

Next in the process was to rub the entire cabinet hutch down with candle wax.  I used a regular old candle I had on hand, and it worked just fine.  The layer of wax causes places where the next coat of paint will resist sticking, and helps create that great, layered old-age paint look.

After the candle wax, one layer of MMS Flow Blue Milk paint went on, and then I started to see some chipping.

So, this piece is a great example of the unpredictability of milk paint!  For whatever reason, even though my first layer of paint didn’t chip at all, my second layer of paint chipped a lot.  And not just the top blue layer that was resisting the wax, but both blue layers.  I honestly have no idea why, but I decided to go with it.

I scraped off all the chipping paint, then wiped it down with a damp cloth to get the dust off (which caused even more paint to chip!).  A little sanding with some fine grit sandpaper was needed in a few spots, but mostly the milk paint distressed itself.  I did choose to finish it with dark antiquing wax because I think it helped bring out the texture in the paint by settling in all of those cracks.

Here is the final product:

See what I mean by a lot of chipping?

This one entire side almost completely chipped off!  Strangely enough though, the other side didn’t chip at all.  Hmm.  Oh well, just go with it, remember?

Check out that amazing texture though!  You can see little hints of the darker Artissimo color underneath the lighter Flow Blue. Creating a look like this is where milk paint really shines–chalk paint could never do this.

The hutch is now one of the main focal points of my booth Christmas display.  I love how it turned out and love how it looks in my space too!  I will be posting soon more pictures of my Christmas booth in general, but I wanted to share the specific makeover of this cabinet first.

What do you think–too chippy?  Or just right?