How To Distress Furniture Using Baby Wipes

Distress furniture using baby wipes or wet distress paint as some DIY’ers call it. This type of distressing shows the beauty of the original finish instead of raw wood. 

Family update: After being exposed to Coronavirus 14 days ago, being seriously I’ll for 10 days, having 3 negative Covid tests last week, Dad tested positive for Covid today.  My sister and I are still quarantined with him and taking good care of him. Please send good thoughts our way.

Distressing paint is easy to do using baby wipes. It’s another paint distressing technique I’ve heard of but never tried until now.

I found out it’s easy as pie and there is no mess. You know how the dust flies when using sandpaper. Well no worries with this technique

As a bonus I made a new complete video tutorial on how to get the popular paint finish on furniture you see in stores and online.

There are many ways to distress painted furniture and depending on the piece and type of paint one distressing technique may be better than another.

One tip you need to remember is to distress with the baby wipes just after the paint is dry. Don’t let the paint dry for too long or you’re in trouble. You have to keep a close watch.

How To Distress Furniture Using Baby Wipes

I’ve used this table in several rooms of my home. Now it’s moving on. That’s the thing with junkers.

We can either have wall to wall junk or move something out when we find something we like better.

At the bottom of the post take my video tour of the junks shop where I buy my treasures!

Select Furniture Project To Paint And Distress

It’s last spot was in the back spare bedroom. I call this room the “Blue Room” or the “Grandsons Bedroom”. My son chose this color and painted the room when he was about 15. Now he’s 34. Yep, maybe time to repaint.

I decided the table had been dark long enough, time to lighten up. What better color than turquoise. Happy Color.

Select A Highly Detailed Furniture Piece

This project is on the Furniture Fixer Upper’s Tour today. Be sure and check out the other projects after reading my tutorial.

The finish on the table was not in great shape. That’s one reason I decided to paint it. The top had several rough parts and splotches of white paint in areas. I sanded the top lightly.

Apply Primer To Furniture

Then I applied my favorite Glidden Gripper Primer tinted gray to the top only. This gave me a solid color base for the top coat. I like to have the primer tinted gray because gray is so much easier to cover than white primer.

Apply Paint To Furniture

I’m still trying to use up all my leftover paint before buying more. I mixed three colors of Black Dog Salvage Furniture Paint together to make a beachy blue color.

The blue was really pretty but just ho-hum. I knew there were some pretty details along the top edge so on to the distressing.

Distress Furniture Using Baby Wipes

I grabbed the pack of baby wipes and started rubbing the paint off of the raised details.

One thing I noticed is when I wiped the paint off and kept using the same baby wipe the blue paint that rubbed onto the baby wipe left a light layer of blue paint on the already distressed area.

This is when I grabbed a new wipe to wipe off the light layer of paint. And I had to keep doing that. Once I had an area distressed I went over it with a fresh wipe to remove the leftover blue film.

I didn’t have to grab a fresh wipe every time just use an area of the baby wipe that didn’t have blue paint on it.

Choose The Right Time

My other concern with the baby wipes was distressing the paint before it set very long. You want the paint to be dry but JUST dry.

I had Miss Sofi and her friend from across the street that afternoon and they of course needed a bit of attention. The paint dried a little longer than I would have liked. Just means I had to rub harder!

Wet Distress Detailed Areas

The original finish of the table was crackled in spots and those areas look soooooo good distressed. The paint sets in those areas and when distressed the paint is left in those pitted areas. 

That’s all it was to the process. Since the color gave off a beachy vibe I decorated the table using  seashells and nautical décor.

I’ll share the details on the bowl and my newly updated DIY Dollar Store Candle Holder later.

And those pink flowers just keep showing up. I just love those flowers. They were a thrifty find at $1.50. I keep dropping them into different containers. They are actually in a milk glass looking container.

If you want to distress painted furniture using baby wipes you could work on a practice board before starting your project. Just paint a board of any type, wait for the paint to dry, and go to work.

Painting furniture isn’t hard and it isn’t time consuming. You can paint a piece of furniture and have it back in place in one day. Really.

Maybe you could start on an easy project. Look around your house and pick out a piece to paint.

Check out this project that I just primed and painted with no distressing. The pretty white paint and new knobs really made the chest of drawers stand out. See it here.

Wet Distressed Paint

I guess I should mention why using baby wipes for distressing is a good thing. The original finish doesn’t get sanded off. You get to see the lovely dark finish and it’s a nice contrast to the turquoise blue.

Other Methods To Distress Paint

When you distress furniture with sandpaper you often sand down to bare wood because the sandpaper is really rough.

The bare wood looks raw and unfinished. It’s always nice to showcase the original stained finish using baby wipes or the wet distress technique.

Take a look at the video below where I show you how to get the look of the furniture (white furniture above) you see in furniture stores and online. Check out my distressed antique white furniture finish tutorial below…..

Distressed Antique White Furniture Finish Tutorial

Check out the post showing my paint distressing using a household cleaner to wet distress here.

You can distress problem furniture using a layering block here.

Maybe you like the gray piece above and are interested in using white paint to highlight furniture details. See that post here.

Leave me a note and let me know how you like the table please.

Thanks for being here and have a great day! Kathy