Gray Washed Vintage Sideboard Buffet

Let’s continue to get Thanksgiving-ready with a new sideboard for the dining room. This sideboard dropped down from the CraigsList heavens (Can you tell I’m watching the movie “Angels & Demons” as I write this?).

The same family that gave me put the lion head sofa table on the curb and advertised it on CraigList did the same with this sideboard. They were planning to move shortly and couldn’t take these pieces with them. If you remember, the
lion head sofa table (aka 9-drawer dresser) was covered in thick, bright yellow paint when I received it. Far from a neat paint job. Similarly, this sideboard had a thick layer of khaki color latex paint.

I don’t like to layer paint on top of an old paint job, so I begin stripping it. I quickly found out that the person who painted the khaki sideboard, never removed the old polyurethane finish nor did they prime it in order for the paint to adhere well. This meant much of the paint peeled off the sideboard in long strips like wallaper. I actually wish it had come off the entire piece like that, but that would have been too good to be true.

Instead, I had to use Citri Strip to remove much of the old paint – a very long, messy process I don’t enjoy. In the end, I was only able to remove about 90% of the old finish so I wasn’t able to go re-stain it.

My main goal was to not add another thick layer of paint to such a beautiful vintage sideboard. I began by priming the entire sideboard with two coats of BIN primer (affiliate link) to prevent bleed-through. Unlike regular primer that’s very thick like paint, BIN is very thin and watery – like a white poly. Once primed, the sideboard didn’t feel like it was heavily coated and I wanted to keep it that way.

So from there, I dry-brushed on some deep gray (a custom mix of Graphite Chalk Paint and White Advance Alkyd). To dry-brush, I wiped most of the paint from my brush onto a paper bag or newspaper so there was very little paint on the brush. Then I brushed the sideboard in random motions, mostly circular to spread the color – thicker in some areas and thinner in others. In the end, the finish looked like stone. A friend of mine thought it resembled gray driftwood. Either way, I’m so happy with the result.

So that the top contrasted just a bit, I wiped on another watered down layer of the dark gray with a rag, then I wiped on a white glaze, then another layer of dark gray. Wiping on thin layers of paint this way and sanding between coats results in the different colors showing thru. The final finish was a water-based satin poly brushed on over the entire sideboard.