navy dining room chairs

hello, i'm annie sloan. i'm going to showyou my signature technique which is two tone distress. the idea is that you haveone colour underneath, you put another colour on top, you wax it, you distress itusing sandpaper and you can see the colour underneath. i've chosen this chairbecause it's got quite a lot of really lovely carving, and so when i sand ityou'll see some of the colour and it will really bring it out. i've chosen quitebright colours, quite strong colours. the colour underneath, giverny, is reallybright and then i'm going to put on top this colour, which is aubusson. it's quitedeep, the two colours will make it look quite modern, quite interesting. of coursethis could be completely different if i

chose to do it on a rather pretty littlefrench piece, and i could do it in say paris grey and old white or duck egg blueand white something like that, make it very, very different. but i love the factthat this is a technique which can look completely different. i'm going to loadthe brush, not too much on there. then paint onto here. you see the sort ofstabbing motion: that's to make certain that i get the paint into all thegrooves and the carving. if i paint this too thickly, what it means is that it's more difficult for me to rub it back. so paint it and then spread it out. so now i'm ready to wax. this is my clearwax and this is my wax brush, this is a

bristle brush it's nice and pointy andit goes in all the little bits that i need, to all the nooks and crannies. soyou get quite a lot of wax on it, not too much you don't want to overload it, andthen you get going. so that's too much. so you're gonnaspread that out a long way, so a small amount of wax does go a long way. so i'll take my cloth and very lightly, not going mad, i'm just removing any excess,that's all there is. what the wax does is protect the paint. it also gives it abeautiful finish, quite unlike varnish. wax is really beautiful in my opinion,it's got a very mellow look. the wax

hardens over time, so you don't want todo it and then leave it and then try to sand it. you're much better to sand itwhile the wax is fairly fresh. you don't want to do it when it's really wetotherwise you're just removing the wax very quickly and very easily. so just putit on and by the time you finish this whole chair you'll be ready to go backto the beginning. i've waxed everything with the clear waxand now i'm going to sand it. i'm going to use my sanding pads. they're reallygood because you've got the medium one, that's the green one, the pink one is afine one, and the blue one is coarse. now usually i'll start with the medium oneand the coarse one because the fine one

is for when i've sort of want to finishoff. you have to see where you are. each piece of furniture you can'tjust go from rule of thumb. i'd start with a medium and then maybe go on to the coarse one. so i'm just going to gently sand that and work out how far i want to go. now i find i'm having to rub harder than i want, so i want more to come out so i'm going to use the coarse one now. and very gently, shouldn't be hard, do you see what'shappened, it's revealed some of the giverny there. so i'm going to go morefor that now. and this is now a bit like, well this is getting really, really funfor me because this is where you bring

it all to life, and work out what youwant. you can't do it like you're just cleaning something: you just polish itall off. you've really got to use the - these are great because they'reflexible, you can do them how you want. by using the wax to begin with it doesn'ttake it off too easily. some places i've gone right through tothe wood there i really like that. i think it works for this very very nicely. and now i'm gonna start waxing it back in. so it immediately goes quite a lot darker. i really like this because i've got thewood coming through, and the wood is actually coming through rather orange soit looks like it's another colour but

it's not. so basically what i'm doing is i'm waxing everywhere that i sanded. so there we are this is my twocolour distress chair. that's it finished! i might put a little cushion on therebut that's it i'm really happy with the way it looks.

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