Chippy Blue Side Tables With Milk Paint

Hey friends!

If you’re on my Instagram and watched my stories last night, you would know that I was doing a little late night project with milk paint. I found these super adorable vintage side tables on Craigslist and I wanted to paint them with my Old Barn Milk Paint as we currently do not have side tables. The process was so easy and Milk Paint is easily one of my favourite paints to experiment with. Each time you paint it is different in that  you don’t know where  your piece will distress. To be completely clear, it doesn’t have to distress at all if you don’t like that look, but I like extra chippiness. I realize that isn’t a word, but it should be.

This doesn’t even really need a tutorial as it’s so easy to work with, but for those of you who have no idea what Milk Paint is, it will be a great read. I didn’t really know what milk paint was until I used it for the first time and I have a few tips for the first time user.

Definition of Milk Paint:

“Milk paint is a nontoxic water-based paint. It is made from milk and lime, generally with pigments added for color. Borax may be added to the milk paint recipe to assist the lime in dissolving the casein and as a preservative.”

For your consideration, I’m a messy painter.. so there’s the color of “Silo” on the bag. The paint comes in powder form. It’s literally only a few ingredients and is biodegradable, non-toxic, and oder-free.

For these side tables I mixed:

1/3 Cup White Picket Fence

2/3 Cup Silo

1 Cup Hot Water

You want to make sure that you stir/whisk the paint extra well until It’s bubbly. I like to use hot water from the tap as it mixes the powder a lot easier than warm or cold water. You want to make sure it is a really good mix, or otherwise it will be chalky and have pigments in it.

Once mixed – go at her. Keep in mind, I didn’t use ANY bonding cream as pictured above as I wanted an extra chippy look. But for my light fixture that I painted the other day, I used 2 TBLS of Bonding agent so the paint would adhere. So if you don’t like distressing – use this!

I only did one coat on my side tables as I wanted them to look very authentically old and chippy. As you can see from the photos, this paint has amazing coverage as you can’t see brush strokes.

As you can see on the side table it is very chippy. I didn’t distress these. These peeled off and I just brushed the peeling away with my hand. Keep in mind, I vacuumed the piece after I rubbed it down with my hand because I was applying a polyurethane to the piece and I didn’t want any debris to dry on.

Something else you should know about the process of painting. You want to give it a good stir every 3-5 minutes. This might sound like a pain, but it really isn’t. You don’t want the paint to settle and start dividing, so a good stir every few minute does the trick. This paint is beyond easy to paint with and has the best coverage, so you will find that painting with this paint will be faster in the long run.

Again, if you do not want it to be chippy or distressed, put the bonding cream in your  mixture.

Honestly, these side tables are a teeny bit short for my room, so I’ll probably end up selling them at some point. But I’m obsessed with how they look and I will be looking for another set to refinish in the future. These do the job for now and I love the look. I also love how they bring the same color blue out of the rug.

As you can tell, I tried to edit the dang lamp cord out of the photo. Guys, I’m that OCD about things like that.. drives me nuts & I was too lazy to go hide the cord after editing all the photos & take a whole new set of photos… so no, that’s not a ghost hiding back there, it’s my crappy editing job! haha

Head on over and go check out Old Barn Milk Paint. I’m literally OBSESSED with this paint and I’ll be ordering a lot more. To be honest, they gave me this paint to try out & I love it.  You will too! Also keep in mind this post isn’t sponsored and these are all my honest opinions of this brand and type of paint.

Hope you have an amazing weekend – we’re headed off to the museum this afternoon!