Hey everybody!  Thanks so much for joining me this week for milk paint madness.  It has been fun sharing lots of info about milk paint with you.  I hope that all of you learned at least one or two new things.  Before I continue I want to take a moment to thank you guys for all of your comments, as well as your continued support of my blog.  I really do appreciate every one of you!

For today’s post I want to take everything we’ve learned over the last week and put it all into practice on piece of furniture.  So let’s get started.

My friend Meggan or, as I now call her, the thrift doctor (I’m trying to convince her to start writing her own column here on my blog called ‘ask the doctor’ with thrifting tips, what do you think?), texted me a few weeks ago letting me know that there was a fabulous desk at the local Goodwill with a bargain price tag.  Luckily Mr. Q was available to dash over there and pick it up for me because I know it would have gone fast.

It doesn’t have a lot of frills, but I like the legs and the drawer pulls are really lovely.  It also was in fairly good shape.

I really didn’t love the orange-y color of this piece though.  I didn’t even want that color to show through in the chippy spots.  So I decided to layer some colors on it using bonding agent in the first color so that it wouldn’t chip down to the wood.

I could also have used a base layer of chalk paint or Fusion acrylic paint, but in this case I had a particular color in mind, Homestead House milk paint in Maritime.  A very pretty blue.  So I mixed my paint first using one part water to one part powder.  Once that was well mixed, I added another one part Miss Mustard Seed bonding agent and stirred it in.

Next I moved on to the prep work.  As I mentioned yesterday, good prep is key to controlling the chipping you might get with milk paint.  But in this case I was using bonding agent in my first layer of paint so I could slack off a little.  Still, I sanded the piece briefly by hand and wiped it down with a damp cloth.

Then I brushed on just one coat of the Maritime milk paint with the bonding agent added.  Now, if I was a really good blogger I would have taken a photo at that point to share with you now.  But no, I didn’t (although that photo of the brush above is taken on top of the desk with its coat of Maritime).  I can tell you that the paint did not chip at all and it had just a little bit more sheen than milk paint normally does.  Similar to the slight sheen of Fusion acrylic paint.

A couple of days went by before I got to the next step in my project, which gave the Maritime plenty of time to dry.  Next, my plan was to use the Homestead House Salad Bowl Finish (or beeswax finish) to encourage a controlled amount of chipping and paint over it with The Real Milk Paint Co’s Soft White milk paint.  So I mixed up the white milk paint, again using equal parts water and powder, and left that to sit while I used my finger to smear some beeswax finish along the edges of the desk.

After painting one coat of the Soft White, you can see the areas where the beeswax is resisting the paint.    The areas without beeswax are not chipping at all.  This also gives you a good feel for the coverage of the Soft White over a darker color.  Pretty good for one coat I think.

I added a second coat of Soft White and left it to dry.

My initial plan was to leave the desk white, but you know what?  I didn’t like it.  I felt there was too great a  contrast between the white and the blue.  It looked splotchy instead of perfectly chippy.  Sorry, again no photo of that step!

One thing that I have learned over the years is to follow my instincts when it comes to these moments.  If my gut is telling me that I don’t like it, I switch gears instead of trying to make it work as is.

So I decided to mix a custom color of milk paint that was about halfway between the lighter Soft White and the darker Maritime.  I pulled out three almost empty bags of milk paint, Miss Mustard Seed’s Shutter Grey and Eulalie’s Sky and Homestead House’s Upper Canada Green and started mixing.

I ended up with this pretty smoky blue with just a tiny hint of green.

I added just one coat of this color over the white.  Once dry I started sanding the edges and discovered the most perfect chipping.

For me, this is the magic of milk paint.

I know you can get a similar look layering chalk paint or even Fusion paint, but I think milk paint always looks the most authentic.

As you can see, I did end up with a little of the wood showing after all, but those are spots where I sanded through the layer of Maritime, not spots where the paint chipped due to the application of the beeswax.

After sanding the entire piece lightly with some 220 grit sandpaper to get it nice and smooth, I added a topcoat of The Real Milk Paint Co’s Dead Flat finishing cream.  Since this is a desk there is the potential it will get a fair amount of use, so I wanted a little more protection than just wax.

By the way, I spruced up the drawer pulls a bit by adding some of Prima Marketing’s Metallique wax in Vintage Gold.

To learn more about that product check out this post.

In the end I love how the desk turned out.  I think I’m going to do more multi-layered pieces using milk paint.  It really adds some authentic age to the piece to see multiple layers of color as though it has been painted several times through the years.

This brings us to today’s giveaway, and guess what?  I have two prizes for today!

The first prize includes:  five colors of milk paint, a Homestead House Espresso wax, a Miss Mustard Seed white wax and a brush.  Thank you to Homestead House, Miss Mustard Seed and The Real Milk Paint Co for providing the items for this giveaway.  Approx. value:  $135.

And I also have a bonus giveaway today!  A while back I had asked Sausha at Sweet Pickins if she wanted to participate in milk paint madness week by providing some merchandise to giveaway.  She said yes, but then life happened and she didn’t get her stuff shipped right away so I just received it in the nick of time in yesterday’s mail.  So I decided to just give that away as a bonus prize today.

Includes:  my absolute favorite Sweet Pickins color, In A Pickle, Oil Wax, Extra Bond, a sanding block, paint brush and paint mixing whisk.  Thank you to Sweet Pickins for providing these items.  Approx. value:  $55.

The basic rules:  to be eligible to win today’s prize leave a comment on this blog post telling me what your favorite milk paint color is.  Your comment must be left on the blog, not on Facebook.  You are not required to follow my blog, although it would be awesome if you did!

I will randomly draw the names of two winners for today’s prizes from all of the comments left on this post by Saturday, April 7, 2018 at the stroke of midnight.  You are eligible to win each day, so if you have left a comment on each day’s post, your name is eligible to be drawn for each prize.

The fine print: no purchase necessary, you must be 18 years of age or older to win, void where prohibited by law, the number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning, if the prize is not claimed by Friday, April 13, another name will be drawn at random to win, blah, blah, blah.

I’ll be announcing the names of all six winners from milk paint madness week on Monday, so be sure to check back.

In the meantime, remember to pin today’s post for future reference.

And if you are local and in need of a pretty smoky blue desk, be sure to check my ‘available for local sale’ page for more details on the desk.