On The Bench

Well, I’ve finished my bench! Sort of. I wanted to create some kind of distressed finish and so I went with the instructions found here for a heavily distressed finish. To be honest, I chose this technique because, as I already had some white paint, it only required me to by some wood stain, rather than another paint colour and primer….  So for my bench, I did two coats of stain and then three coats of French Cream latex eggshell paint. So that was good. But when I got to the distressing, I found (to my distress. haha) that the stain must have penetrated the under-layers of white paint, causing any areas I sanded to be yellow. I wrote The Frugal Designer to see if she had any idea and she responded (very promptly I might add!) and explained the stain penetration and suggested that it would be beneficial to seal the stain before painting. So…next time! I could probably sand all the paint off, add more stain, seal it and then begin the process again but I’m not sure I will. You can see our conversation about this topic in the comments below the instructions, in case you are thinking of trying this technique yourself. I’m not overly bothered by the yellowing. I’m also pretty proud of my first carpentry project and am excited to move it into the new house! So I’ll probably just love it the way it is and move on.