Salt Wash Painting

I have been looking for some new paint or techniques to get motivated to paint some furniture. One of the products I found is Salt Wash. It is an additive that can go into ANY paint to get a sun/ sea side worn look.

This is how it turned out. I went pretty aggressive with the distressing, but hey it was supposed to have a "worn look." I love it!

I started with a thrift store coffee table that was really beaten up on top. This made the perfect piece to try this technique on since the heavy texture will hide imperfections. Sorry forgot to snap the ugly before picture. I added the powdered Salt Wash product to my can of white chalk paint. I followed the manufacturers instructions and got it to a stiff cake batter consistency. I then covered the table in a almost pouncing motion causing peaks to form.

You can see the texture it created in this close up picture. As the paint gets to the half way dry point, I took my brush and swept back and forth knocking down the peaks a bit for a more smoothed out look. I then did a top coat in a Waverly Chalk paint called Agave. I thought it was a nice beachy aqua.

You can see I did not go for full coverage as I wanted my base color to show in spots. I then took my obital sander to the table and showed no mercy. This was a very aggressive approach. The next project I think will be using the mouse sander to distress as it is much more subtle looking. Honestly, this sander scares me a bit too, it's pretty powerful and if I don't have my full concentration when using it, I can see me hurting myself.

I went crazy with the sander, but it revealed the undercoat and the dark brown wood which I think made it much more interesting.

It was a fun product to play with and I found lots of other inspiration online using the product. They do have great videos made by the people who created the product. You can find them on Youtube. What do you think? Are you going to try Salt Wash?