Secretaire

 

So my secretarie is finally finished – it was a hard slog. Just in case you’d forgotten here was it before.

After I’d removed the hardware and started to clean it I had what should have been my first indicator that things were going to be difficult. I cleaned it with a spray cleaner and paper towels and as I did so the towels were covered in brown. That had never happened before, but I just carried on regardless.

The attractive thing about chalk paint is that you are meant to be able to use it without any prep whatsoever and most of the time that works. This time however as I painted I had ‘bleedthrough’; whatever was used to coat and protect the wood before was seeping through my paint. I didn’t take a picture at that stage as I thought if I kept painting it would eventually cover it; it’s chalk paint, right???!

Wrong!

The stain kept coming through after two, very thick coats of paint. That’s when I started to duck, duck, go. The options where to sand through it or use and anti-stain primer. I decided to try sanding first. I realised though once I’d started that the details on the secretaire would make them difficult to sand to the extent I was having to to get rid of this treatment. So, on to the next…

I have functional French and can cope in most situations even if I’m not exactly smooth in my delivery. However it’s still hard communicating and understanding technical vocabulary, so I was relieved to get through the experience understanding what had been said to me.

After a coat of the kind of primer that stops stains they still peeped through, I was starting to get really worried. I realised that the design I’d wanted – the white exterior with pink interior that you can see on my research post – may have some serious difficulties. After a little more research I found lots of aged, green designs and figured I’d just work with the stains.

I had a can of moss green chalk paint and two coats of that went on and to my relief no stains! The interior had a faux leather writing area that couldn’t be removed, but after I’d used the primer on that too I could paint it with the moss green easily. However I wasn’t happy with the uniform colour and decided to try spray painting it gold – I’m so pleased with the results. Where the chalk paint creates a brush stroke the spray paint on top ends up with wonderful effect as some of the green peeps through. So pleased with it. I finished this area with two coats of clear varnish as previous uses of gold spray paint have taught me you must seal it to protect it from being gradually worn down.

I also use the gold spray paint on the sides of the drawers so there’s a flash of gold as you open them.

Then I hand painted roses on it with acrylic paints and stood back to admire my handy work. Even though the bleed through wasn’t showing the freshness of the paint was too bright, too new in the 19th century dining room. Particularly as, as you can see in the pictures, I removed all the carpeting and the original floor beneath is intact. So I decided to age it with some dark wax.

I’m not going to lecture you with a tutorial on this – its chalk paint, its been done a million times right?

I’m pleased with the result after all the mis-starts – whats do you think?

By the way, these photos are of my great, great grandmothers; cool huh?