Thrift, Annie and me - but not you

This begins with a complaint; a complaint about you, my lovely readers. Lots of you knew that I liked painted furniture. That I disliked knotty pine. That I preferred neutral colours to orange fake wood. And that I was a sloppy, hasty, impatient corner-cutting, bodging type of DIY-er. 

Didn't you? Come on, you know you did. 

Perhaps you'd forgotten my orange knotty pine and laminate bedroom furniture that I bought along with the cottage, because it fitted the tricky space, and could easily be painted. Perhaps you'd not been reminded, as I tended to keep my weary repetition "I must give all this ginger stuff a lick of paint! A Spring project... oh no, a summer project....oh drat, an autumn project...." to myself, and sometimes, The Gardener, who has a long To-Do list of his own?

The motivation to apply that lick of paint had evaded me for a year.

So tell me -  why did no one amongst you tell me about Annie Sloan Chalk Paints? The no-priming, no-sanding, slap-it-on-quick paint, perfect for those, who like me, tend to skimp on preparation and expect wondrous transformation in half an hour?

Anyway, despite your secretiveness, I noticed it myself in several American blogs, and enquired of all-knowing You Tube as to whether or not this was just a tantalising dream.

But no; such a miraculous paint existed, seemed very popular in the States, where heavy old brown pieces of furniture with unfamiliar names like 'hutch', 'buffet' and 'chiffonier' were turned into pretty and more contemporary items in the wave of a paintbrush. And best of all, the paint was available in a new shop half an hour's drive away from where I live.

So The Gardener and I charged off to investigate, bearing with us a scrap of bedroom curtain fabric to match colours with, found exactly what we wanted, and a few days later I made a start. 

Result:

From bright orange to Country Grey, in no time at all.

I wanted a dead flat finish, rather than a distressed look, and so far, have found that easy to achieve with the paint. But the soft wax applied later on is harder to succeed in getting on evenly, and dries so quickly that I struggle to avoid blotchiness. Those of you who have used ASCP (as the US bloggers tend to call it) - any advice?

The other miraculous thing is that The Gardener has come over all enthused too, and promises to paint with me. My cup paint pot runneth over.....

I'll post pictures when it's all done - and the bed will be properly made too.