It’s the month of November, and we’re honoring the great outdoors this time of year — and infusing our workbench and website with a creative nod to Christmas trees — by choosing Blue Spruce as November’s color of the month. This shade of milk paint is a soft, calming green–blue hue that evokes the look and feel of a beautiful November holiday garland. Blue Spruce would look stunning as fireplace trim or in your dining room, but today we’ve used it to breathe new life into a well-deserving chest of drawers.
Prepping the Paint Project
One of the most talked-about attributes of milk paint is its convenience. In most cases, you won’t need to waste time applying coats of primer or scraping off old paint before getting to work, and this dresser was no exception. All we had to do was remove the hardware to allow for easier paint application (and to preserve the beautiful patina on the existing drawer pulls), and we were ready to start.
Painting the Chest of Drawers
We painted the sides and drawers of the dresser with Blue Spruce, letting each coat dry before applying the next. Depending on your DIY project and the thickness of your paint application, it may take just a single coat to reach your desired coverage or you may need as many as three.
Next, we taped off the top of the piece and applied milk paint hemp oil using a foam brush. By leaving the top unpainted, we created an interesting contrast between the colored sides and front of the dresser and the more natural top. The addition of hemp oil helped bring out the character of the natural wood without contributing any sheen. Hemp oil also penetrates well, sealing wooden surfaces to protect against water rings, drips and spills.
To protect and enhance the parts of the dresser
with Blue Spruce, we applied Dead Flat Finishing Cream. This no-odor, non-VOC, water-based top will safeguard our paint job without adding shine, and it’s washable, too.
Finally, we reattached the hardware.
The Benefits of Milk Paint
It’s easy to see the visual perks you get when you use milk paint colors for your DIY projects, but there are less tangible benefits that often go unnoticed. For starters, our milk paint contains just four ingredients: casein (milk protein), calcium lime, raw earth pigment powders and plant-based filler (it’s actually edible!). Compare that to the endless list of unpronounceable ingredients touted by the competition — many of which use chalk or clay fillers — and the difference is obvious.
Milk paint is:
- Water-based
- Environmentally friendly
- Nontoxic
- Virtually odorless
All thanks to our simple and effective four-ingredient formula.
Another interesting note: We mixed up the milk paint color for this dresser a full week and a half before we started painting. This long “working time” makes it remarkably easy to press pause on a DIY project and return as your schedule allows.
