How To Whitewash French Provincial Furniture

It's easy to whitewash French Provincial Furniture and I made a video tutorial on the whitewash technique just for you. This project was fun! I hope you love it as much as I do. The whitewashed French Provincial chest of drawers is so pretty. I’ll show you how I got the perfect whitewash finish in just a few easy steps and the video shows the process even better.

It’s also Furniture Fixer Upper Day and you guys know what that means. My fabulous furniture painting friends have makeovers for us and the links are at the end of the post.

I told you guys it’s pretty. The blue is perfect and it’s an oops paint! That means someone else didn’t like the color and I was able to buy the gallon of paint for $7. Deal.

I purchased the painted brown chest of drawers from the shop owner where I have my booth. It was only $60. Still getting those deals. The brown color was a bit on the drab side. Since the style is all girly I was going to paint the chest pink but glad I didn’t. Sometimes the obvious choice is not the best.

The piece had one broken drawer pull but since I have a drawer full of French Provincial pulls I was sure that wouldn’t be a problem. Boy was I wrong. More on that later.

Other than being dirty the piece was in good shape. The drawers were all intact and I didn’t need to make any repairs.

 

First thing I did was pull out boxes and bags of French Provincial pulls trying to match the ones on the chest. I buy the pulls when I find them at the junk shop or flea market and when the price is reasonable. These pulls are hard to come by.

Can you believe there wasn’t a single match out of all of those pulls! I counted and I have 60+ French Provincial pulls and the photo above doesn't show all of them.

I came up with the closest match. This also meant I would need a pair of the replacement pulls. You sure don’t want two different size pulls on the same drawer.

I needed to drill new holes for the pulls. You can see in the photo above that the screws on the replacement pull do not match the screw holes of the original pulls.

I marked for the new holes and then drilled them with my Ryobi cordless drill.

I did good with the measurements and the drill and didn’t have to try to wallow out the screw holes to make the drawer pulls fit.

Since the pair of drawer pulls were smaller than the others on the bottom half of the chest I put the smaller pulls on the top drawer of the bottom section.

The original drawer pulls on the top part of the chest were different sizes than the ones on the bottom too. I will have more issues with the pulls. Stay tuned.

I removed all the drawer pulls before painting and the little decorative key hole piece too.

Then I sanded the rough areas of the chest of drawers…….

…….Tightened up loose drawer runner screws…….

…….Vaccumed and cleaned the interior and exterior of the chest of drawers.

The sheen of the brown paint finish made me think of oil based paint so I applied one coat of Glidden Gripper Primer.

Then I applied two coats of the blue oops paint. The paint covered really well.

I’ve had the oops paint since 2015 and have used it on several projects. One of my favorites is the kids playhouse I re-painted using the oops paint.

The color is pretty but those curves and details called for a little more. Whitewashing those areas sounded like the right plan.

I spray painted the original hardware and the replacement hardware with white paint. I applied several coats for full coverage.

When I was putting the pulls back on the chest I broke one. I almost said a bunch of bad words…..okay maybe I did say  a couple. Since the drawers have those curves sometimes the pulls don’t pop right into the holes. You can usually bend these a tad and I was very gentle but it didn’t matter. The pull that broke was one of the original pulls that goes on the top drawers. Now…..another problem.

The main issue I ran into was the larger ornate pulls I had in my stock similar to the original ones had no give at all and would not conform to the curve of the drawer.

I searched and brain stormed drawer pull ideas and finally just came up with these two small pulls to go on the top drawer. I had to drill new holes and fill the old holes with wood putty….then paint the wood putty.

Finally time to whitewash the furniture. The video shows the process much better than I can explain but I’ll give it a shot.

First step is to add water to white latex paint until the paint is really thin. The brush the paint on the areas you want to whitewash and wipe back the whitewash until you get the look you want.

The white highlights make a big difference in the overall look. The piece went from ho-hum blue to designer worthy.

French Provincial drawer pulls are the prettiest of all pulls and the white paint makes them shine. The smaller pulls on the top drawer are okay but I wish the chest had all original drawer pulls.

The whitewash is very soft and light. The cool thing about whitewashing anything is you can go soft and light, heavy and rich looking, or anything in between.

 

 

I used a small paint brush for the line details on the sides of the body and the legs.

You can see the whitewash technique process in the video below…

How to Whitewash French Provincial Furniture

Time to take the Furniture Fixer Upper Tour. Just click the pink text links below the “before makeovers” photo collage…

 Antique Twin Headboard Makeover  from Confessions of a Serial DIY’er

How To Blend Paint Colors from Girl In The Garage

Faux Driftwood Finish Nesting Tables from Salvaged Inspirations

How To Whitewash French Provincial Furniture from Petticoat Junktion (You are here)

As always, thanks for being here and have a great day, Kathy