Coffee Table Color Wash with Luckett's Green Milk Paint

I picked up this coffee table at a local thrift store, with every intention of refinishing the top in a dark stain, and painting the base in a neutral shade of white. As with many well-laid plans, the end result was nowhere near my starting vision! And, thank goodness. I went waaaaaaay outside of my comfort zone on this one, and....surprise!....I sort of love her. This is how she started {well, sort of}. Why am I so bad at taking Before photos??  So, 3/4 of the photo is how she started. The other 1/4 was step 1 of my mission to refinish the top. It's obviously a veneer top, so I had to be careful not to sand too far down - just enough to remove the beat-up old finish. That also meant she was left with some scars from deep scratches I just couldn't fully remove. We call those Character. I was too impatient to sand the whole top before seeing how it would polish up. I ran out to the garage and grabbed my can of Dark Walnut stain. Mixed it up, applied it, and ..... it didn't look anything like Dark Walnut. Turns out, I left it out in the {un-heated} garage all winter, and it'd gone bad. Chad had all of the good cans across town in our workshop. Ugh.   Before I jumped to a decision on the top, I thought I'd try a color wash {a paint mixture with high water content, that goes on like a stain} on the base of the table, using some Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint in Luckett's Green that I happened to have in the house from a birdhouse painting project I did the previous week.   Hm. Not in love. Maybe with another coat.   It's a terrible photo, but nope - still not the look I wanted. So, a complete change of course, I decided to sand down the remaining top, do the color wash on the now raw wood, and a full-color paint on the base.   Here she is, after painting and sanding, but before a finishing coat.   I did not use a bonding agent on the base, so I got some nice chippyness over the original table finish. Awesome!   Here she is, after a top coat of clear furniture wax. Look at how much more the color pops on her base after adding that finishing coat! Perfectly springy and green, feminine and functional.     This lovely lady still needs a home! Give us a shout if you have the perfect place for her! Have a piece of furniture that needs to be rejuvenated? We offer a few avenues to help: Take a Milk Paint workshop, and learn various techniques for painting your own pieces! Request a quote for custom painting {you supply the piece, we paint it to your vision}. Email info@carverjunkcompany.com with a photo of your existing piece, dimensions and details on what you'd like for it to look like!