, originally uploaded by brocantegirl.

Isn’t this gorgeous? This painted wooden console table graces a simple entrance hall to a stylish Parisian apartment. The careful choice of a subtle grey paint and a few well chosen ornaments really shows that shabby chic furniture can be very elegant.
Personally I just want to stroll in there and settle down to some polite conversation, a few madeleines and perhaps a cup of lime blossom tea…
I would love to stroll over and look out that window. I wonder if I’d see the Seine below
Back to reality. Tables like this are available in the UK to buy new. Scumble Goosie did one a few years ago but don’t have anything quite like this at the moment. Trouble is elegance does not come cheap and they can be quiet expensive.
Might be a good moment to continue my painted shabby chic furniture instructions.

High Chair For Sam, originally uploaded by jamie_joslin.

Isn’t this sweet? Jamie made it for a young man named Sam and I think he’ll love using it.
Real Diva says:

This was an antique chair my friend bought when she was pregnant. I stripped about 100 years of paint of the thing…it was pink, green, had watermelons on it…it was also in rough shape. I re-enforced it, painted the chrome in new paint and did a little Beatrice Potter theme. I had so much fun doing my research for this one.

The whole thing has been done with such care and attention to detail. She even used non-toxic food grade varnish for the tray in case he decided to take a bite on those carrots!

High Gloss Black Vanity Table, originally uploaded by Nadia Bacons.

Once you’ve done all your hard work painting you could end up with something as yummy as this glamourous Shabby Chic dressing table.
I’d love to see this adding a bit of Holywood glam to a bedroom with lots of mirrors and satin bedcovers.
I’d need lots of lovely accessories to put on it of course……….

I’m going to post a two part series about preparing wooden furniture for painting over the next few weeks. Here’s Part One:

Preparation

If the piece of furniture is unpainted or maybe varnished:

1. Remove any dirt and grease.
2. Wash it down with hot water and sugar soap. Wear rubber gloves! That stuff is bad for delicate skin
3. Give it a stiff brush over to get rid of anything loose or flaking
4. You can fill small holes and cracks with wood filler.

Warning: Do not use ordinary household spray cleaners! They can stop the new paint from keying (sticking) to the surface.

If the piece is has already got a fairly OK coat of paint, or a light varnish, you may get away with just rub down with fine sandpaper to give the new paint a key. If you are just adding a finish, like crackle, you could just wipe it with sugar soap applied with a sponge

How to use sandpaper

Wooden furniture usually has any serious roughness already removed. Still, to get a good finish you need to use sand-paper There’s is a right and a wrong way of doing this and it makes a big difference to your results.

So long as the surface of the furniture feels only slightly rough, a medium followed by a fine sandpaper will do the job. Hold it perfectly flat against the surface. You can buy special blocks of cork to wrap your sandpaper round and these are definitely worth using. It makes sure your paper is kept in even contact with the wood.

• Maintain even pressure (otherwise you can make lumps and bumps )
• Never rub across the grain of the wood (or you can get uneven uptake of paint, dark patches etc ).
• Sandpaper is graded from very fine to coarse – start with medium & move to fine
• Finish with black emery paper (called ‘wet-and-dry’) use it with water for a very fine finish.

Sourcing the finishing touches

When you are planning a piece of painted wooden shabby chic it is really important to have a vision of what you want to achieve. Decide on they style you are aiming for, be it New England, European or even Gothic and plan you colour scheme. Then look for fittings to enhance your vision. Occasionally you’ll know as soon as you see the furniture what you will do with it, other times it can sit around for ages waiting for you to be inspired. You can go as far as this preparation stage and then get really stuck!

Sometimes finding the perfect fittings can help.

Living room, originally uploaded by Wren’s Nest Cottage.

I love the shade of green used for this room, it really sets off the painted furniture and gorgeous sofa. The real star has to be that wooden floor. The rich brown of the polished floor is such a treat!
This cottage has been so sympathetically styled, I just wondered what the wooden door at the side was all about. The owner explained:

They are shutters. We were on a trip to New Orleans a few years back (pre-katrina) and an old house in the Garden District was being remodelled. The owner was selling everything he had torn off the house and we saw these and fell in love with them. Luckily, we had driven instead of flying, so we loaded them up in the car and brought them home, with no idea what we’d do with them. They’ve roamed all over the house since then, til we finally decided they looked best here!

A friend who grew up in Washington State once told me that her family home had been a perfect example of this style until her father decided to ‘modernise’ in the late 80s. She’d returned home for a visit to discover he’d thrown everything, including original shutters on a bonfire. The house had become a featureless shell. Her parents loved it. Turned out they’d never liked ‘all that clutter’ and had just been waiting till they could afford to re-model. Needless to say her house in the UK is a repository of every kind of American folk art she’s been able to collect!