whitewash.

As promised in my post from earlier today, I have pictures of the furniture we stained for Chloe's room. Originally, our plan was to paint the dresser and nightstand white, but while we were at Home Depot we saw a white stain that we really liked instead. The color was called "White Wash Pickling", whatever that means! It was just a tad lighter than white paint, which would let the grain of the wood show through. Our hope was that the stain would have a slight antique effect, which solid white paint wouldn't accomplish.

I bought Chloe a Rast dresser from Ikea on Saturday. I love this dresser because it's cheap (less than $35!), it's only 27 inches tall which is perfect for a 5-year-old, and it's basically a blank canvas just begging for some lovin'!

The other piece of furniture we stained is a nightstand that I found on Craigslist for around $20 and immediately knew it had potential to be a rock star.

We set up shop by laying some butcher paper down on the driveway, and setting out all the drawers.

Tony started brushing the stain onto the dresser while I tackled the nightstand. After the first coat, the dresser was already starting to look pretty good.

The nightstand, on the other hand, was another story. The wood was much older than the Ikea dresser, and it just wasn't absorbing the stain very well. After the first coat, I was starting to panic a little!

Tony kept reassuring me that after the second coat, it would look much better. Luckily, he was right! Both pieces turned out really nice once we applied two coats and let them dry.

You can see in these close-up pictures how visible the wood grain is, which is exactly the look we were hoping for.

I think they look very cute, so fingers crossed that they pass the Chloe-test!


Update: Chloe informed me tonight that her new pieces of furniture are "the best things in the whole world." Score!