Home Made Chalk Paint - My Review

I am so late to this party, that is for sure ;)

I finally, finally (!) got around to trying chalk paint, well home made, at least.  Annie Sloan's version is very very close to being here in Australia and New Zealand, and I am looking forward to trying it after all the hype I have seen (read) over the past two or so years.

I picked up this desk last week and decided this was my guinea pig for chalk paint...

(phone photos...sorry!)

There are lots of recipes on the internet for home made chalk paint, they mostly consist of mixing plaster of paris and water into acrylic paint (some use calcium carbonate and some use grout).  I went with plaster of paris and mixed it into a paste with water then mixed that into some low sheen water based acrylic (good old classic Dulux Antique White USA).

It mixed to a nice consistency fairly easily and I started painting the desk straight away (after cleaning it thoroughly but not sanding it...this paint is meant to stick to 'glossy' surfaces).  After about 10 minutes it started thickening, at first not too thick for me still to paint with, but a few minutes later you could stand the brush up in it, and it needed watering down again.

I had read that this paint dries very quickly once painted on the furniture but to be honest it didn't dry as quickly as I thought it would, but we have had some pretty wet humid weather here lately (I painted on a fine sunny day though).  I ended up doing 3 coats in total over two days.  In between coats I put the lid on the container with the chalk paint mix in it and it kept it fresh, just needing a bit of a stir and some more water and paint on the second day.

After it was fully dry I distressed the desk by hand (using 240 grit sandpaper) and true to what I had read, it did distress very easily...almost too easily for my liking!

I personally don't like an unpredictable chippy distress job which I think is what this chalk paint is meant to do...see in the corner there...that is what it did and I don't particularly like it. I was worried it was going to come off in big chunks if I kept sanding.  Some people like that look so I wouldn't necessarily say this is a flaw...it just doesn't suit me and my preferred style.

I don't love the handles either but as this was a real trial piece, I decided to leave them as is.

I finished it off by sealing with wax.  It has come up quite nicely and certainly an improvement!

My verdict on home made chalk paint:

I am not convinced at all.  I don't like the way it chipped off in some areas like it wasn't going to stop. Maybe I watered it down too much after the first application but I put it on pretty quickly...if you need to remix with water and more plaster of paris/paint every 10 minutes or so it isn't very user-friendly.  If I am going to go to the effort of finding and paying for a nicely shaped piece of furniture to give new life to, I want to make sure that it has plenty of years of new life ahead of it.
I don't have faith that home made chalk paint will definitely give me that, so I am going to stick to the tried and trusted quality procedures and products I usually use (and wait for Annie Sloan's to land here!)