Before and After: Bedside Tables Whitewashed with Chalk Paint

How to whitewash dated pine bedside tables with white chalk paint for a fresh farmhouse look. Includes before and after photos.

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Today I’m showing you how I took a set of dated pine bedside tables and freshened them up with a rustic farmhouse whitewashed look using chalk paint. I had Pure White chalk paint and clear wax left over from this project that I did for Annie Sloan. If you’ve never used chalk paint, this is probably the easiest kind of project to start with. There are no fancy techniques. Just one straight layer of paint, a bit of sanding, and a finishing coat of clear furniture wax.

This project is part of a larger process of breaking up a whole bedroom suite of knotty pine furniture which was very stylish about twenty five years ago, but not so much now. Besides that the finish had dulled and darkened on all the pieces to a deep orange-y colour which was quite overwhelming all in the same room.

The tables required no prep at all. I decided to remove the doors from the bottom part of the tables and insert a basket in their place. A small poll on Instagram showed that people unanimously agreed with this idea, so the doors went. One less thing to paint!

I applied a very scant coat of paint to allow the rustic features of the tables to shine through. Can you see where some of the wood is cracked and the rusted nail heads are exposed…? After painting I took some medium grit sandpaper and loosely sanded across all the edges and corners and any raised detail on the side panels. I wiped down all the dust and applied a single layer of clear wax to protect the surface, paying special attention to the table top where marks and spills are most likely to happen.

I added this fun chalkboard tag to the front of the baskets (have you seen this popular style basket from Target?). To see how I made the tags you can refer back this post where I made the same type of labels to organize my tween’s closet.

And just in case you thought only my basket got the cute treatment...

As an added benefit the tables now make a great backdrop for a good dog photo, haha! Yes, that is her dog bed right beside her, which she doesn’t sleep on. This is her spot. *sigh*

So there’s the first big milestone on the pine bedroom suite. You can also see a little bit of the bed that replaced the pine bed, and I haven't quite decided what to do with that yet. Currently a wide dresser is being made over into our dining room sideboard, I can’t wait to share that update too!