Painted Kitchen Bench

I love a good painted kitchen bench.  Don’t you?  It is such an inviting place for Mr. Right or a guest to sit while I’m cooking.  We can catch up on the latest gossip world news while they are comfy and at ease.  Before writing this post, I counted up on my fingers how many benches are actually scattered around our house, and we have seven in various shapes, styles, sizes, and textures. Two were factory-painted, and I have painted two of them.  I wrote about one of them here and another one here.  I have lost count of how many times today’s featured bench has been painted, and all of those times were before we started blogging over three years ago.

 

Before I go on, we have a major announcement tomorrow here on the blog.  It’s our biggest announcement in our blog’s history of announcements.  Be sure to come check it out.

I have been a fan of the color navy forever, and it is almost every room in our house.  So, choosing Napoleonic blue by Annie Sloan was a no-brainer.  It works especially well in this space because Lulubelle’s eyes are navy.  (You’ll see her in a minute).

 

 

This bench was one of the very first pieces of furniture we ever bought.  We went on a furniture shopping spree after we had been married about nine months and bought a bunch of matchy-matchy furniture.  The original finish was maple wood stained maple.  We have thought about getting rid of it a few times, but the sentimental factor caused us to hold on to it.  Plus, it is super solid and has some storage space underneath.   I did the last paint job about 10 years ago but have thought about repainting it since we moved in here.  I have been procrastinating because several of my friends said it looked just fine the way it was.

 

 

After I put on the first coat of the chalk paint, the finish looked like this, and I kind of liked it.  It showed some of the previous finish and was smeary.  However, the OCD in me forced me to give it a second coat.  I didn’t want it to look as if I had been too lazy to do it the right way.

 

 

 When it was finished and put back into its regular space, I was so glad that I did paint it twice.  The navy is lush and gorgeous. (It truly is a navy which isn’t coming across in the photos).  I sanded it down in just a few places.  I wanted to make it look as if it had worn naturally so I sanded it in places where people would have been sitting or moving it.

 

Ahhhh……here’s Lulubelle, our kitchen’s goddess.  She keeps an eye on everything that goes on in there, and she totally approves of the new bench color.  She, too, thinks it goes so well with her eyes.

 

I look at the completed product and wonder what took me so long to take on this painted bench project.  Oh yes…..It was my friends saying it looked great the way it was.  Now I’m trying to remember what other things I have taken their advice on.  Hmmmmm.

 

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Take care.