Baby on a Budget: How to Refinish Furniture Using DIY Chalk Paint

I've said it before and I'll say it again, when I was pregnant I was obsessed with our baby's room. I wanted it to be perfect.  Problem was, I didn't really have a lot of money to spend. So I got crafty.  And I'm not a crafty person. I'm the kind of person who needs easy peasy, don't have to be artsy, next to impossible to mess up kind of crafts and projects. This is one such project. It's for all you lazy lay-crafters out there who want (fairly) quick results with minimal effort and even less $$ spent.

Amid my crazy pregnant lady planning and obsessings I decided I wanted a cute dresser for our baby's room. Okay, I didn't just want it, I needed it. I figured the kid was going to have a lot of clothes throughout her life and I wanted a cute place to store them. I also didn't really want to buy a new dresser.  Dressers are annoyingly expensive in my opinion.  Luckily, we had swiped a dresser from my in-laws when we got married (and by "swiped from my in-laws" I really mean "were graciously given by my in-laws").  It was a good, sturdy dresser with a reasonable amount of storage but it wasn't exactly cute.  At least not baby room cute.  So hubs and I started talking about painting it. As we talked about borrowing a sander, finding a place to sand it (we lived in a tiny apartment with no good place to really sand something), potentially lugging it to my in-laws to sand, types of paint to use, what color of paint to get, and so on it all seemed like a lot of work.

But then I remembered my furniture refurbing pro of a sister-in-law uses something called chalk paint when she refinishes her garage sale finds. I was pretty sure this magical chalk paint thing didn't need sanding. As I did some more research I learned that chalk paint was incredibly easy to use. You basically just slab on couple coats with a decent paint brush, add a top coat and - voila! You're done! No need to prep the furniture at all. 

Now this! Was right up my alley!

Real "chalk paint" is ridiculously expensive to buy and actually a little tricky to find.  Luckily, it's really easy to mix up a batch yourself using three easy-to-find ingredients.  

DIY Chalk Paint Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 parts latex paint
• 1 part Plaster of Paris
• Water to mix

(For additional chalk paint recipes using calcium carbonate, grout or baking soda check out this post from Salvaged Inspirations)

Step 1:
Mix Plaster of Paris with enough water to make a little paste.  I prefer to only mix a little bit of paint up at a time as it can start to thicken over time.  I like to mix about 1/3 cup of plaster of paris with a few tablespoons of water.

Step 2:
Stir paint into plaster mixture (1 cup of paint for every 1/3 cup of plaster of paris).

Step 3:
Get painting!

That's it! I was amazed at how easy the paint was to use.  It covered the wood easily (which I did nothing to prep) and I only had to do two coats!

Once I was done painting I sealed the furniture with a couple coats of satin polycrylic and added some new hardware. I relined the drawers using a cheap magenta polka dot wrapping paper I found at Target for about $2 and used this recipe for a paste (although if I were to do it again I might try this recipe instead).

And voila! A cute "new" dresser for my baby girl's room!

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