Good morning!  How was your weekend?

I have long been obsessed with Pottery Barn and their current yet timeless style.  I am partcularly obsessed with their slightly distressed totally perfect black finish, but not obsessed at all with their prices and the fact that the closest Pottery Barn is in Ontario!

So, what to do, what to do. . .  turn to the www of course, specifically Pinterest!  I had been noticing that this tutorial kept popping up, so I watched it a few dozen times and thought what the heck, looks do-able.

And you know what??

It was!

My table went from this:

to this:

(not a great after pic, but you get the idea).

I am in love with it!

I followed the steps in the video.

It was lightly sanded, primed with this stuff:

(here's a little tip also courtesy of Pinterest; line your paint tray with foil - makes clean up a snap!)

Make sure you use a decent quality foam roller:

That was then lightly sanded:

It was then wiped down and dried, and then it was time for the the first coat! I was so excited to get that on, but wait, we ran into a slight glitch.  Notice anything (besides the fact that it's a grainy cell phone pic)??

That's right - it's not black, it's blue! Long story short, I chose a colour called "Jet" as in black.  When it was mixed, it didn't look right to me but the paint guy convinced me that it would dry black. Well, it didn't.  Back to the store I went. . . twice!  Moral of the story: stand your ground with the paint guy.

Once that was corrected, it was really fun painting and sanding and painting and sanding and painting and sanding!

And then the really neat part began - the distressing.  The right angles were very easy to distress, but the rounded edges were a little more challenging.

I skipped the step with the stain pen, I tried it but didn't feel like this piece needed it:

It was then wiped down thoroughly and given two coats of this, with cheesecloth:

A little of this goes a long way, but the finish is wonderful - satin-y without being shiny?

I highly recommend the video if you are going for this look - it's easy to follow and I just love the end result!

I also painted some furniture for Emma, not quite as subtle, which I'll share in another post!

Also, do you know that registration for Crop and Create Winnipeg opens tonight?? I am beyond excited to be teaching again, and I hope you'll come join me for a class or two:

Class descriptions can be found here!  Can you believe the talent I'm teaching with?? Can't wait!

Have a great Monday everyone :)